The Empty House
by Elaienar
Summary: When Mouri Ran returns to Tokyo, Japan, after ten years in America, she learns that a childhood friend has passed away in the interval. Then who is this in the supposedly unoccupied house...? AU/AT, character death, general OOC-ness.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Detective Conan or any of the events, characters, or locations in it. Does anyone here know anyone who owns the location specified in a book?

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**Chapter One**

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This story begins on a wintry weekday afternoon in Tokyo, when the cold winds and grey clouds lowered sulkily over the rooftops, half-heartedly threatening snow or sleet or freezing rain, and withholding it just as indecisively. It was the sort of cold, damp, noisy, windy day which makes one feel dull and tired and irritable; and which makes one want nothing so much as to get somewhere warm and well-lit and quiet, or, if one is already in such a place, makes one want to never leave it.

So when Hattori Heiji said he had to stay after school to look into one of the many cases of items that had mysteriously vanished that he had taken up since he and Tomoya Kazuha had transferred in from Osaka, and when Kazuha said she would wait for him, Mouri Ran and Suzuki Sonoko quickly seized the chance to postpone their walks home (Ran gladly, as her walk home was longer and in the opposite direction as her friends') and said they'd wait with Kazuha.

"I'll be glad of the company," said Kazuha, slinging her book-bag onto a chair and collapsing into another as Heiji left the room. "It's taken Heiji more than fifteen seconds to find this 'vanished' item, and he'll talk of nothing else when we're alone, the ahou."

Ran said: "He must be glad to have someone to discuss his work with," and, always practical, got some homework and pencil out of her bag before she sat down.

"Husbands always confide in their wives," teased Sonoko.

"He's not– it isn't like that!" protested Kazuha, red-faced. "We're just friends!"

"Oh?" said Sonoko, smirking. "You can't fool _me_, Kazuha-chan. I've got a nose for these sorts of things – and," she added, complacently, "it doesn't hurt to have eyes, either. I saw the way you were looking at him at the Halloween ball. 'Oh, Heiji'," she mimicked, clasping her hands and gazing at the ceiling with much lash-fluttering. "'Heiji, my love' – right, Ran?"

"What?" said Ran, without looking up.

"I was _not_," spluttered Kazuha, leaping to her feet.

"You were so," taunted Sonoko. "Ran knows – oh, you weren't there. I'd forgotten."

Ran said, "What?" again, but this time she raised her head.

"Haven't you been listening?" demanded Sonoko.

"No," said Ran, gesturing to the sheet of paper in front of her. "I've been doing my homework."

Kazuha peered over her shoulder. "You're half done already!"

"It's English, isn't it?" said Sonoko. "Yes, it is. Somehow I'm not surprised."

"Ten years in America," said Ran, shrugging and smiling. "But what were you saying?"

"The Halloween – "

" – Costumes this year," said Kazuha, aggressively. "Hardly a ghost or a vampire to be seen, but there must have been hundreds of Luke Skywalkers."

"It's so commercialized," complained Sonoko, compliantly. "What I wouldn't have given to see a good, old-fashioned ghost!"

"Ghosts aren't real," said Ran, vaguely and irrelevantly, her mind already straying back to her homework.

"Of course ghosts are real!" cried Sonoko. "Haven't you seen _Midnight Vision_? Or _The White Rose_? It's so thrilling – and romantic!" she added, straying as well. "Lovers' feelings continuing after death... how tragic!"

"Heiji doesn't believe in ghosts," said Kazuha, fingering the omamori hanging from her neck.

"This, Kazuha-chan," said Sonoko, "is the twentieth century. Wives don't have to believe what their husbands do anymore."

"I don't – and Heiji's _not_ my – oh, stop it, Sonoko-chan!"

"Ran agrees with me," said Sonoko impishly.

"What?" said Ran.

"I said – " began Sonoko.

"Done already, Hattori-kun?" said Ran, in a pointed manner.

"Yup," said the Osakan, leaving the door open behind him and tossing a packet of pink envelopes to Sonoko, who caught them with an exclamation of delight.

"Thanks!" she said. "Where did you find them?"

"Oh, around," said Heiji. "What are you talking about?"

"Ghosts," said Ran, as she began stowing her homework away. "Sonoko says they're romantic."

"They are!"

"They might be," said Heiji dryly, "if they existed."

"They do!"

Heiji slung Kazuha's bag over his shoulder and picked up his own. "I'm not convinced. I've investigated supposed ghosts before, and they've all been hoaxes."

"But not _all_ of them are," shot back Sonoko. "What about the Kudou house – it's haunted!"

"'Kudou'?" repeated Ran, pausing in the act of putting her pencil away.

Sonoko whirled on her. "You've heard of it? – Oh, of course you would have; it's just a few blocks away from your house, after all."

"I haven't heard of it," said Ran.

"It's pretty famous among the students here," said Kazuha. "I'm surprised you don't know about it."

"You say it's haunted?" queried Ran.

"Some of the students say it is," said Sonoko, dropping her voice to a whisper. "People have heard someone crying, and seen lights go on and off, even though the Kudous haven't lived there since the murder."

"I think I've heard of this," said Heiji, pausing by the door. "Otousan was here investigating something to do with the mafia about eleven years ago, before it happened. He worked with Kudou Yuusaku then. It was a burglary, wasn't it?"

"What happened?" said Ran.

Kazuha reached for her omamori again. "Someone broke into the house, and a little boy was there alone. He called the police, and the burglars must have panicked."

"They killed him," said Sonoko, dramatically, "and now he's haunting the house, waiting to get revenge."

"They must have been on drugs or something," said Heiji. "He was only eight or nine. Otousan met him, too, when he was here – he said he was a smart kid." He frowned. "What was his name? D'you remember, Kazuha?"

"Umm," mumbled Kazuha, uncertainly. "Shintaro or something, I think."

"No, not Shintaro – oh, I remember now! 'Shinichi' – it was Kudou Shinichi, of course."

Ran's pencil snapped with a loud crack.

"Sorry," said Ran, blankly. She stooped to pick up the pieces that had clattered to the floor as her companions turned to look at her. "You – you're sure it was Shinichi?"

"Yes," said Heiji, confidently. "I remember now. I was interested in it when Otousan first told me about it, but the burglars got clean away with the loot. There were _no _clues at all."

"Oh," said Ran.

Sonoko said, "Are you okay?"

"I knew someone named Kudou Shinichi," said Ran, slowly. "It was a long time ago – before I moved to America. I was – surprised – that's all."

"I'm sorry," said Kazuha, a note of curiosity in her voice. "Did your parents work together on a case or...?"

"We should hurry or we're going to be late for dinner, Kazuha," said Heiji. "Come on, Suzuki-chan, your house is on the way to ours. 'Bye, neechan."

"Right, right," said Sonoko. "Goodbye, Ran. I'll call you, okay?"

"But – " said Kazuha; she paused to glance at Ran's still face, and then took Sonoko's arm and followed Heiji. "'See you later, Ran-chan."

"Later," said Ran.

She watched them go down the hall, turning the broken pieces of the pencil over and over in her hand; listened, when they turned a corner, to Sonoko's petulant voice (in which the word "ghosts" was audible from time to time); Kazuha's, quiet and cheerful; and Heiji's, sounding disinterested and unconvinced, until they faded away with the sound of a closing door. Then she put the broken pencil carefully into her bag, buckled the bag onto her shoulders, and left the school.

So – Kudou Shinichi was dead.

Odd, that it shocked her so much. After all, it had been ten years since she had seen him. Many things could happen in ten years... and she couldn't even remember what he had looked like now; his face had gone dim and blurry in her mind. Hadn't he had blue eyes? Yes, blue eyes, and black hair; but she couldn't see the shape of his eyes or the sweep of his hair anymore.

Odd, that the thought of that boy, energetic and cheerful, sometimes interested, sometimes bored, but always determined and quick to act upon his determinations – odd that the thought of him still and solemn in death hurt her so much; her stomach had clenched into a tight, nervous knot of unhappiness. After all, they had barely known each other before her father had taken her across the seas, away from his memories of her mother. How many months had they known each other? One? Two?

Odd, that stab of emotion that pierced her heart when she realized that he had been lying cold and dead and buried under a concrete slab for ten years, while she (silly, silly girl) all unknowing, dreamed of meeting him again when she returned to Japan, as she must some time – of telling him about her karate championships and hearing about his soccer tournaments.

How very odd.

The cold wind was stinging her eyes. She wiped them, almost angrily, and abruptly turned down a street that did not lead to her home.

The Kudou house was a block over and three blocks closer to the school than the place her father had rented, between a towering stone house with steepled red roofs and a squat, white house with rooms projecting awkwardly out at uncomfortable angles.

The Kudou house was enclosed by a tall stone wall; the wrought iron gates were locked and chained, and the rust was red upon chains, gates, and locks alike. Beyond the gate, Ran could see the sidewalk and long grass littered with dead leaves, brown and black, and a low pile of moldering leaves lay under a naked tree. There were weeds growing in the garden plots, and the border-stones were uneven and askew.

The house itself looked neat enough – someone had cleaned the gutters recently – except for the leaves caught in the door- and window-frames; it had an empty, blank look. One window was boarded up, and this door, too, was chained, though the chain was black and not rust-red.

Ran stood at the gate, fingers wrapped around the bars, and gazed at the silent house. Her eyes traveled slowly from the roof to the foundation and back up again. Then she let go of the bars, stepped backwards, turned, and continued down the street. She did not look back.

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That night it began to snow.

It was snowing still when Ran woke the next morning. It snowed all through the morning: as she dressed and groomed, cooked breakfast for herself and her father, and as she walked quickly to school with her mind firmly upon the weather and the fact that her father had come back late and reeking of alcohol _again_. It snowed through her morning classes and through the lunch period.

By one o'clock the heavy, soft downpour had become a series of doubtful flurries born on a playful wind. When school let out, even these had ceased, and the pale grey sky had scrubbed its face of clouds and become a brilliant icy blue, punctuated only occasionally by scudding pure-white clouds and cold yellow shafts of sunlight that played over the drifts of snow, reflecting painfully off them, and making them almost impossible to look at.

"Snow!" said Sonoko enthusiastically. "I _love_ snow. Frozen angels' tears and symbolism: snow-white means innocence, purity – like you, Ran."

"Thanks," said Ran. She gathered her books and papers together into her bag. "Would you like to come over and – and bake cookies?"

"I've got a recital," said Sonoko gloomily. "Maybe next week?"

Ran watched her go dispassionately and then turned to the two transfer students who stood beside her. "What about you, Kazuha-chan? Hattori-kun?"

"I'm meeting otousan and going with him on a case," said Heiji apologetically. "Maybe Kazuha...?"

He scooped up a pile of books and their bags and left Kazuha and Ran together. Kazuha folded a piece of paper methodically and looked across at Ran without moving her head.

"I already told Heiji I'd come with him," she said slowly, "but I'm sure he wouldn't mind. Ran-chan, are you all right? I mean," she went on hurriedly, "you seemed really upset last night."

Ran turned startled eyes on the girl. "Upset?"

"You went all quiet," said Kazuha quickly. "And your face... it was white. I'm sorry if I'm intruding."

"It's fine," said Ran, smiling. "I _was_ upset. Shinichi and I – we'd only just met when 'tousan decided to move to America, but we were fond of each other. I was surprised, mostly. I'd no idea he was dead."

Kazuha smiled back, uncertainly.

"You should catch up with Hattori-kun," Ran told her. "He's taken your bag with him, you know."

"That ahou!" said Kazuha fondly. She tucked her papers into her pocket and darted forward to give Ran a brief hug before following after Heiji.

Ran walked home quickly and without any deviation from her normal route. The snow along the roads and sidewalks had been swept away already, but there were white drifts still on most of the roofs. There was a tiny pile of muddy snow near the door of her apartment; and on the door itself she found a note in her father's handwriting which read simply (and rather crookedly): _Out for dinner. Back before 12._

"Mah-jongg _again_?" said Ran, exasperation in her voice. She balled the note in her fist and shoved it into her pocket while she unlocked the door one-handed.

The apartment was a wreck. The remains of her father's breakfast were scattered on the table and the floor, and beer cans were strewn liberally across the furniture in front of the television, which was on to a news channel with the sound muted.

Tossing her bag onto the table, Ran fumbled in her pocket for the crumpled note and threw it into the trash-can, then turned the TV off. She stood in the middle of the room and stared blankly at the chaos around her – beer cans, crumbs, her father's wrinkled clothing; then, deliberately and without haste, she crossed the room and went out, locking the door behind her. She set off down the street toward the Kudou house, walking quickly.

When she reached it, her walk had turned into a run. She skidded to a stop before the gates and leaned against them.

Behind the walls the house lay silent and still in the middle of a level white blanket of pure, unblemished snow. There was snow on the roof, on the windowsills, drifted against the walls, on the trees.

Ran looked at the house for almost a minute, so silent and still that she could have been part of the gates she leant against. Then she took a deep breath and looked behind her at the empty street.

"I don't think I should do this," she said aloud, stepping back and to the side, and measuring the walls with her eyes. Then she ran forward and jumped, and her gloved hands gripped the top of the wall. She pulled herself up, scrambled over, and dropped into the snow below with a muffled thump.

Her breath frosted the air in front of her and her cheeks were wet and cold. Rubbing at them with her hands, she began making a slow circuit of the house. When she had completed it and stood by the iron gates again, she paused for a moment, tapping her fingers together, then retraced her steps to the back of the house, where she stopped.

One of the windows at the back had a large, jagged hole in one of the bottom corners. Ran crunched through the snow to the window, avoiding the shards of glass at the bottom of the wall, reached in, fumbled for a moment, and then found the lock. Carefully she pushed the window open and scrambled through, pushing the heavy black curtains to one side as she did and then drawing them closed after her.

She stood by the window for a moment, then removed her shoes, set them to the side of the window, and then moved toward the door to her right.

The room she had come in by was the breakfast room, by the looks of the ungainly white-shrouded shape in the center of the room and the glimpse of the kitchen through the door to her left. The walls were bare of any ornament, and heavy black curtains hung before all the windows. Ran wondered briefly how anyone could see lights going on and off with the thick cloth blocking the light, and noted the thin layer of dust covering everything in the room. Someone had cleaned recently, it seemed.

The rest of the house was much the same. Bare walls, sheeted furniture, darkened windows, and dust everywhere. It rose in little grey puffs as the walks from room to room.

When she came to the fifth room she stopped, her breath catching in her throat. This room was a library – a huge library with a high ceiling. The curved walls were covered with bookshelves from top to bottom, and the shelves were covered in books; thousands and thousands of books, covered in a thick layer of dust. The floor was almost clean, though. And on the floor, near the center of the room and a white-cloaked desk, was a brown stain.

Ran drew her breath in sharply and then clamped her mouth shut. Turning her face away from the stain, she walked round the room, keeping close to the bookcases, until she was opposite the door, with the desk in-between her and the mark on the floor. The wood around it was worn and discolored: someone must have tried to scrub it off.

A tiny shudder shook her and she turned away again, and rubbed the spine of a book less dusty than others on the shelves. _The Sign of Four_, it read; by Arthur Conan Doyle. She pulled it out and flipped through it listlessly, then put it back and dusted the spine of another: _The Daughter of Time_ by Josephine Tey; and another: Edogawa Ranpo's _Imomushi_; her finger was halfway down the spine of another when she had to stop to wipe her face again, dusty fingers leaving black marks on her wet cheeks.

"I'm such an idiot," she whispered aloud; her quiet voice was swallowed up by the silence. "What am I doing here...?"

Behind her something clicked quietly and golden light flooded over her shoulders. Ran whirled to face the doorway just as the boy standing in it spoke.

"What _are_ you doing here?"

_To Be Continued_

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A/N: Well, here I am again, at last. And what is this? This, Gentle Reader, is what I'm doing for NaNoWriMo. I don't know if I'll be able to finish it within the month of November, but in the newsletter that the site sent out at the beginning of the month, we participants were recommended to tell as many people as possible about the project, in order to provide a reason for not quitting. (The reason would be being embarrassed in front of so many people by having to admit that I'd quit.) 

So you can expect to see more of this at intervals. Even if I don't finish it in November, I promise to keep on writing it here, okay? You can throw eggs at me if I don't.

And on another note, I haven't edited this at all. I haven't even gone back over it since I wrote it, so I have no idea what glaring misspellings or grammar-mangling may or may not have occurred in this chapter. So if you're going to review and you happen to notice a mistake (or even if you just notice a mistake) please, please tell me where and what it is. This would be a tremendous help to me when I'm going back over it and editing. Okay? Okay! Thank you so much!

I'm also looking for suggestions on a better name. This house isn't very empty, is it?

Ja ne!

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Japanese glossary from this chapter:**

**ahou:** idiot.

**-chan:** a suffix attached to names, indicating friendship; usually used among girls, and occasionally used by a girl to a small boy.

**neechan:** big sister; a suffix or nickname.

**omamori:** a protective charm.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I own _Detective Conan_. That's why I'm online writing fanfics instead of being a good manga-ka and drawing the next chapter. Yup.

...Okay, I lied. I don't own it.

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Chapter Two

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For a moment Ran couldn't speak. 

The boy in the doorway stared at her. The light from the hall shone from behind him, blurring the edges of his small figure and casting his face into shadow, but she could his eyes, widened behind thick glasses; and his mouth was rounded into a small, surprised "o". He had paused when she turned, body angled away and one hand raised toward the switch on the library wall. And she was frozen, too, shocked to find someone other than herself wandering through this lonely house, and shamefully conscious of her dusty, tear-stained cheeks.

Then the boy completed his movement, deliberately and carefully moving the switch into the "on" position. The room filled with light.

Ran found her voice. "Won't someone see?" she asked.

"No," said the boy, almost cheerfully. "There's the blackout curtains, you know, and even if someone did they'd only think it was the ghost."

"Oh," said Ran.

He had turned to face her, shoving his small hands into his pockets, and she noticed that even in the cold weather he was wearing only shorts, and that his shoes were still on. But it was his face that interested her the most – turned toward her with the mouth curved in a small smile and the eyes slightly narrowed now. She stared at it with the same interest that it looked at her.

It was a good face, she thought. It was still rounded and almost chubby, like a toddler's face, and the nose was little more than a blunt snub; but the eyes – blue eyes – behind the thick-rimmed glasses were well-shaped and well-spaced; the childish mouth was firm and neither too wide nor too small; the chin already had a look of shadowy, unself-conscious determination; and the nose (what there was of it) promised to be fine, straight nose, once it got a chance to grow. Even the tangled black bangs that fell into his eyes and the untidy cowlick at the back of his head gave him a look of eager, youthful carelessness, rather than one of juvenile shoddiness.

It was a good face.

Then why, she wondered, did the sight of him gazing at her with childlike, unabashed curiosity give rise to vague, uneasy stirrings in her mind?

"Who are you?" Ran asked.

"Ne, neechan," said the boy, ignoring her question, "aren't you afraid of the dark?"

"What – ? No, I'm not, but – "

"Did I surprise you?" asked the boy. "Ne, neechan, were you scared? I'm really sorry. But, neechan, what are you doing here? Are you looking for something?"

"No," said Ran, quietly. "I came because I used to know someone who lived here. I was curious, I suppose."

"Really?" said the boy. "Did you get in through the window? The back door's unlocked, too, you know. Agasa-hakase left it like that. I think he's getting absent-minded. He must have forgotten to lock it last time. Did you see the door?"

"No," said Ran.

"It's in shadow, that's probably why. Ne, neechan, you said you knew someone who lived here, didn't you? Who was it?"

"Kudou..." said Ran, and turned away, running a finger across the spine of _The Sign of Four_ again. "...Kudou Shinichi. I knew him."

The boy said nothing. She blinked again and rubbed at a squarish lump on the spine of the book. It seemed something had fallen between the pages and the binding. "I only found out he was dead yesterday. I came here because my house is nearby and I wanted... I don't know where he's buried..." She trailed off and bit her lip, then turned back to the boy, who was looking at the bookshelves, and mustered a smile. "I'm sorry! I haven't even introduced myself. I'm Mouri Ran. Pleased to meet you."

"Eh?" said the boy, tearing his gaze away from the books to look at her face, and looking blank for a moment. "Oh. Um, I'm Edogawa Conan. Nice to meet you too." He shifted his eyes back to the books and added, almost inaudibly: "America."

"What?"

"Where Shinichi-niichan is buried," explained Conan. "They took the body when they left. Ne, Ran-neechan, your father is Mouri Kogoro, right? The detective?"

"Yes," said Ran, bewildered. "But why – "

Conan was looking at her again, his small, round face suddenly excited. "That's great! You can help me, then."

"Help with what?"

"With my investigation," said Edogawa Conan, matter-of-factly. "I'm a detective, and I'm trying to find out why Shinichi-niichan was murdered."

His voice echoed hollowly against the bare floor and high ceiling, throwing back the word _murdered_ before dying into silence. And Ran, in silence, stared at the child's cheerful, determined face.

"Why he was murdered...?" she said at last. "But... it was a burglary, Hattori-kun said. He came home and surprised them and they panicked... didn't they?"

"No," said Conan. "He came home and called the police, and _then_ they broke in and killed him."

_Then...?_

"But that means..." said Ran, slowly, and with dawning horror; "...that means that they knew he was there."

"Yes," said Conan. "That's what it means. Ran-neechan, are you all right?"

Ran unclenched her fists and flexed her aching fingers. "No," she said, "I'm not. Are you sure that's what happened? That it was really..."

"It's in the inquest," said Conan, nodding. "When Shinichi-niichan called the police he said that someone was trying to break in, not that someone had already. Anyway, he probably wouldn't have had time to call the police if he'd walked in on them. Furthermore, if it had been a normal planned burglary, the burglars would have been watching the house before they broke in. They would have seen him and called it off."

"And if it had been a spur-of-the-moment burglary, they wouldn't have picked out a house with someone already in it."

The boy flashed her a quick smile. "Right," he said. "That means that, in all likelihood, it wasn't that the murder was committed to protect the robbers, but that the robbery was committed to protect the murderers by making them seem to be simple burglars."

"But he was only a little boy!" protested Ran, suddenly and violently. "Why..." Her voice wavered and died, and she had to pause and swallow the lump in her throat before she could continue. "Why would anyone want to kill him?"

"That's what I want to know," said Conan. "But since I'm little there's hardly anything I can do on my own. You'll help me, won't you, Ran-neechan?"

"Yes," said Ran.

Conan smiled.

The smile lit up his pale face and his bright blue eyes, giving it a look of almost angelic joy. Ran found herself smiling back almost happily, despite the fury of sadness and despair that had been tearing at her moments before.

Then Conan pulled his hands from his pockets, placing them together before his face in a gesture of thanks. "Arigatou, Ran-neechan!" he chirped; and then, lowering his hands with an expression of dismay: "I didn't bring anything with me today. I was just going to think..."

"What didn't you bring?" queried Ran.

"Papers," explained Conan. "Newspaper clippings that Agasa-hakase got for me, mostly. I'm afraid that's all I've got, and I've gone over them many times already."

"Hattori-kun said there wasn't any evidence," said Ran thoughtfully. "And it's been ten years since then..." She shivered suddenly.

"Who's 'Hattori-kun'?"

"Hmm?" Ran looked down at Conan's small intense face. "He's a transfer from Osaka – an amateur detective. His father's in the police like mine was."

"Why did he transfer to Tokyo?" asked Conan.

"I've forgotten if I ever knew," said Ran. "They – he and Kazuha-chan – transferred together at the beginning of the semester. I only got here a couple of months ago so they'd already settled in by then."

Conan seemed to have lost interest. "Oh," he said, vaguely. "Well, Ran-neechan, I can bring my papers here tomorrow. If" (anxiously) "if you can come, that is. You can, right?"

"Of course," said Ran. "After school, I guess. I'll need to make supper for otousan before I – oh, no! How long have I been here? Let me look at your watch, Conan-kun."

"It's stopped," said Conan, holding it out obligingly to show the thin silver hands halted at 7.28. "Less than an hour, though. I was here when you came in," he explained.

"Oh," said Ran, relieved. "But I've got a mountain of homework to do, anyway. I suppose I'd better go."

"I'll show you the back door," said Conan, quickly. He turned and vanished into the hall; his voice came floating back to her. "This way, Ran-neechan."

Ran crossed the room, a little unsteadily, and turned the light off before she left the room. The light in the hall was off again, and when she threw a last glance over her shoulder at the library, all she could see were shadows and a faint grey-black smudge where the shrouded desk stood. She turned away and shut the door behind her.

"Ran-neechan!"

Conan was already at the other end of the hallway. As Ran moved toward him, he slipped through another doorway and she heard the click of a lock and the creak of hinges. Bright sunlight flooded into the hall, playing on the dust stirred up by her feet.

"Just a minute, Conan-kun," called Ran. "I've got to get my shoes."

In the breakfast room she made sure that the window was locked before she picked up her shoes and left; she could hear Conan humming tunelessly to himself in the other room. When she entered (the room he was in was barely bigger than a walk-in closet and had no purpose that she could see) he was sitting on the floor with his bare knees drawn up to his chest and his thin arms clasping them, but he leapt lightly and silently to his feet and began chattering immediately while she slipped her shoes on and knotted the laces.

"Look, Ran-neechan, here it is. You can come in this was next time instead of climbing in the window. And there's a gate in the wall at the back, too. You can get in easier that way. Did you see the gate, Ran-neechan? I'll close the door."

"No," said Ran, smiling again, and stepping out onto the doorstep and then setting off through the snow to the stone wall. "I didn't see it."

"It's right in front of you," said Conan, "so just walk straight across." There was a click as the door into the house closed behind her.

The gate in the back wall was a simple wooden door turned to a grey-brown color by time and the weather. Unlike the gates in front, it was free of chains, and the creak it made when she opened it was almost inaudible. The alley it led into was neat and rather muddy, as she saw when she stepped out into it; the snow had been swept away so that only a few grey piles of it in corners remained to remind the viewer of the snowfall that day.

"Tomorrow, then?" she asked, turning.

"Un!" said Conan cheerfully, making an odd little jump out of a pair of her footprints onto the stone threshold. "I'll see you then, Ran-neechan. You can come in right here. The gate doesn't lock."

"Is it really all right?" said Ran, suddenly. "Meeting here, I mean. Well – " with a little laugh that was not at all amused " – Shinichi once said I had an open invitation to his house, but under the circumstances..."

"Agasa-hakase's letting me go in there when I want to," said Conan, smiling. "He's in charge of everything since the Kudous are out of the country. And anyway invitations don't die when people do."

"Maybe not," said Ran; and then, "Conan-kun, aren't you cold?"

Conan gave her a blank look. "Eh?"

"You're only wearing shorts. Shouldn't you put on something warmer before you catch a cold?"

The blank look became one of surprised reproach. "But," said Edogawa Conan, "these are my _detective_ clothes. I _always_ wear them. Besides, I never catch a cold."

"Oh," said Ran gravely, choking back a laugh. "Well, that's, um... I'll see you tomorrow, Conan-kun."

"Okay," said Conan. "'Bye, Ran-neechan."

He stood with his hands in his pockets, watching her as she walked away and turned the corner onto the road.

----------

"The snow is gone," complained Sonoko.

"Yes," said Ran, "it is."

Sonoko lay slumped across Ran's desk with her head turned toward Kazuha's and the door of the schoolroom, weighing down several sheets of homework and watching other students stream out of class with a disconsolate expression on her pointed face. She said, "The snow is gone, the sky is grey, and Hattori-kun is gone. Aren't you sad, Kazuha-chan?"

Kazuha wisely refrained from rising to the bait and merely muttered something about an important police job.

Flipping her head over, Sonoko eyed Ran accusingly. "Why aren't you sad?" she demanded. "The snow, Ran, the _snow_! It's _gone_! And it's windy and wet and cold, cold, cold."

"You make a nice paperweight, though a bit oversized," observed Ran, mildly. "May I have my homework, please?"

"You're cold too," grumbled Sonoko.

"I'm not cold, I'm in a hurry," corrected Ran. "Sorry. But I need to get home and cook dinner so – "

"Cookies!" exclaimed Sonoko.

"What?" said Ran.

"Let's go to your house and make cookies," clarified Sonoko. "With chocolate chips and nuts."

"Oh," said Ran. "I can't."

Kazuha looked up from her book-bag.

"You _can't_?" said Sonoko.

"I can't," repeated Ran. "Something came up. Which is why I need to hurry home so I can make supper for otousan, which is why I'd like my homework, please."

"Is it a boy?" demanded Sonoko.

"Wh-what?"

"Sonoko-chan..." murmured Kazuha.

"Is he cute?" inquired Sonoko unflappably.

Ran yanked her homework out from under her friend unceremoniously and stuffed it into her bag. "No, it isn't," she said defensively. "I don't want to talk about it, and we'll make cookies some other time. 'Bye, Kazuha-chan. Stop wailing, Sonoko. See you later."

She shouldered her bag and left the room quickly, but she could hear Sonoko complaining: "It is a boy, I know it is, and I'll be the only one left without a husband!" and Kazuha's irritated: "I don't have a – oh, stop it, Sonoko-chan!"

Ran covered the distance to her home at a brisk walk that was almost a run.

When she reached the apartment the television was on and beer cans were strewn across the floor, but, for a change, her father was draped over the couch with his dirty laundry. He was unshaven and untidy, and looked a little more than half-asleep.

"Tadaima," called Ran, shutting the door firmly behind her. "Otousan, what are you doing here? Don't you have work today?"

Mouri Kogoro dragged his red-rimmed eyes away from the screen to stare blearily a the clock on the wall. "Er... yes. Let's see... what time..."

"Four o'clock," said Ran.

"Huh?"

"You told me last week," said Ran, patiently, "that you had something to do today at four o'clock. You also said it was very important, but that was after you'd come back from the bar so I'm not sure how reliable it is."

The former police detective blinked vaguely at her, then swore under his breath and stumbled off the couch and across the living room towards his bedroom, from whence loud, explosive exclamations and frenzied thrashing sounds proceeded, denoting that he was donning clothing more suitable for appearance in public.

Ten minutes later he shot out of his room, clean, shaven, and even neat, and made for the door. "I'll be out late, so don't cook for me," he commanded without looking at Ran.

"Otousan!"

"_What_, Ran?" demanded Mouri, his hand on the doorknob. "I'm going to be late!"

Ran hesitated. "Did you know..." she began, and then changed tacks quickly. "I mean, have you heard from the Kudou family since – since we moved to America?"

"What? Kudou?" said her father, irritably. "Kudou Yuusaku? Probably. I don't know. I'm going to be late. Don't ask silly questions!"

Then he was gone, with a clatter of shoes. The door slammed shut behind him.

"Yes, otousan," said Ran.

She heated a jumble of leftovers for her supper, and ate it quickly with her eyes on her homework. Once she had finished eating and cleaning, she decimated the homework with only half her mind on it, then tidied the apartment and changed into warmer clothes. Then she left, stopping on her way downstairs to drop a pile of business records for a gun-manufacturing company off at her father's office.

Then Ran went to keep her appointment with Conan.

The snow in that neighborhood had melted too, of course, leaving the earth dull an wet; and what grass there was had turned an unhealthy yellow-brown color and gone limp and disgustingly slimy. The fact that it had turned cloudy again and that what sunlight that shone through was barely yellow enough to be called "sunlight" did not make the sodden ground look any less ugly.

When she pushed the gate into the Kudou's yard open and saw the view inside the stone wall, she stopped in her tracks. It seemed to have been transformed overnight into a huge, shallow puddle made of mud and decaying leaves; but after her first disgusted look Ran squelched through it stolidly, her eyes fixed on the golden light shining through the cracks around the back door. She scraped her muddy shoes on the doorstep and then opened the door, calling out as she did so.

"Conan-kun? I'm here."

Almost immediately Conan's round face came into sight, peering around the doorframe of the breakfast room. His blue eyes were rounded in an anxious look that quickly melted into a welcoming smile. "Hi, Ran-neechan," he chirped. "Come look what I've got!"

"Just a moment," said Ran, plucking at her shoelaces with cold fingers. By the time she got them off and stood up, tucking her hands into her pockets for warmth, Conan had quietly disappeared back into the breakfast room.

The light from that room shone out into the hallway, illuminating the clean floor and the awkward grey-white shapes that were most probably a table and a fake potted tree; casting odd angular shadows on the walls. Her own shadow lay black behind her, on the wall across from the breakfast room. She stared at the scene – light, hall, sheet-covered furniture, shadows – for a moment, faintly puzzled, then moved to the doorway.

In the breakfast room Conan had pulled the cloth off the table. It was now draped over a single chair that had been pushed against the bare wall; the other two chairs stood by the round wooden table. On the table was a stack of what looked like, for the most part, newspaper clippings; though Ran thought she saw an edge of paper that looked more like stationary. Conan was squatting rather precariously on one of the chairs, his eyes fixed broodingly on the papers.

"Conan-kun?"

From his position on the chair, Conan tilted his dark head sideways to give her an inquiring glance. "Yes, Ran-neechan?"

"Did you sweep the floors?"

Blue eyes crinkled in a pleased smile. "Un! Agasa-hakase usually cleans once a week, but he's been on vacation – he's not been feeling well – and it's built up. If we keep stirring it up it could get in your lungs and make you sick, so I swept it."

"That was very thoughtful of you," said Ran.

"Thanks." Conan put one hand to the back of his head and rubbed it through the untidy hair there in a gesture of embarrassment. "Ano... anyway, Ran-neechan, I'm glad you came."

"I said I would," said Ran, and stepped over to the table, tracing the grain with her fingers. "This is...?"

The child spread his arms to indicate the papers on the table in front of him. "This," said he, "is what we have to work with."

_To Be Continued_

* * *

**A/N**: I seemed to be still going fairly strong, though the chapters are shorter than I'd thought they would be. This one comes to seven pages in Word with Times New Roman font size ten. It was about fifteen pages in pencil on college-ruled paper. 

This chapter was hard to write for two reasons: first, it's almost all dialogue, and dialogue (when not sub-classed as 'witty banter') is nothing like my forte. Second, there were about a dozen things I needed to stick in here, and I had no clear idea of where I was going to put them all. That made it very interesting to write. n.n

The third chapter probably won't be up for a week or more, since we're having company from later today (Monday) until sometime Friday. One of my mother's friends is bringing herself and six of her children to have a week of fun-fun chaos. Add them (seven) to us (nine - my father, my mother, myself, and my six siblings) and that means I'll be helping to cook for and clean up after sixteen people for at least four days. I'm sure it's going to be great fun!

Thank you for all your reviews!

Ja ne!

* * *

**Japanese glossary for this chapter:**

**ano**: um

**arigatou**: thank you

**-hakase**: professor

**-kun**: a (generally) masculine suffix indicating friendship or familiarity.

**ne**: hey; usually translated as "right?" when attached to the end of a sentence rather than the beginning.

**neechan**: big sister; a suffix or nickname.

**niichan**: big brother; a suffix or nickname.

**otousan**: father

**tadaima**: right now (literally); a greeting used when returning home; generally translated as "I'm home".


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own _Detective Conan_. No, really!

* * *

**Chapter Three**

* * *

"But it doesn't make any _sense_," said Ran. 

"That depends," said Conan, "on what you mean by 'sense'."

They were sitting in the chairs at the table – at least, Conan was sitting, bolt-upright, with his small arms folded across his chest and his head turned towards Ran; Ran was slumped forward in her chair, her hands gripping the edge of the seat and her forehead resting on the cold wooden surface of the table, dark hair splayed about her like strange, feathery petals.

Ran said, "What I mean by 'sense' is something – _anything_ – reasonable or solid. A suspect, a motive... or perhaps a witness who is not a complete idiot. What," she demanded, irately, lifting her head and reaching for one of the papers that were spread out all over the table, "is the use of a witness who didn't see anything useful and wasn't even sure about what she _did_ see? Asked what time she saw the two 'mysterious figures' enter the house, she said she wasn't sure. Asked if they were male, said she really couldn't say. Asked if they were female – thought it was possible. The only thing she _didn't_ dither over was saying that they wore dark clothes – and then she had to go and say that it was getting quite dark so she might have been mistaken. And she couldn't even say what she meant by 'quite dark'!"

She paused to make a growling noise in her throat. "No faces! No outstanding features! No license plate numbers! No anything!"

"They didn't come in a vehicle," Conan pointed out mildly. "She could hardly have taken down invisible numbers off the plates of nonexistent cars."

"She could have been a little more observant!" retorted Ran. She flapped the paper irritably (it was an article on the inquest that had come from the _Metro Shimbun_) and squinted at the faded lettering once again. "All the information from the witness amounts to is what we already knew – that Shinichi got there before the so-called burglars."

"Not quite all," corrected Conan. "She also said that Shinichi-niichan arrived several minutes after the beginning of the seven o'clock news on channel ten, which means after 7.05 – or, say, 7.10 – and probably before 7.20 PM; and that the mysterious men arrived sometime after the next commercial break, coming from the same direction. And that it was less than five minutes later that she heard shots. Also, the police were unable to find footprints or fingerprints of any kind, so her statement that there were two intruders was helpful."

"But from the doctor who performed the – the autopsy, we already knew that the time of death was 7.15 at the earliest, and from the police that it was before 7.58, when they got there. So except for the direction and the number, she didn't provide any new information, and what she did wasn't very... wait. Conan-kun, if they came from the same direction, close behind him... could they have been following him?"

"I've wondered that myself," said Conan evenly. "After all, there's over an hour in-between the time he left his friend's house – "

"'About six o'clock'," quoted Ran, eyes on the paper. "That's when he left Kuroba Toichi's house. – I think I've heard of Kuroba Toichi. He's a magician, isn't he? The one who died in an accident on stage about seven years ago?"

"Eight," said Conan. "Yes. And I'm sure that if we could find out what Shinichi-niichan did with that time, we'd be able to find out why he was killed," said Conan.

"You think it was something _he_ did, then?"

Conan nodded wordlessly.

"It couldn't have been – " Ran hesitated, clasping her hands together in her lap "You don't think it was intended to convey a threat to Kudou-san? After all, he's a detective. There must be many people with a grudge against him."

"Not anymore," said Conan.

"What?"

"Kudou-san hasn't done any detective work since Shinichi-niichan was killed. Agasa-hakase told me. He's started writing mysteries again. So if it _was_ a threat – which is possible – it certainly worked." Conan leaned forward, cupping his chin in his hand and staring at the wall before them. "And... Agasa-hakase also told me that Kudou-san was investigating a supposed suicide that was connected with one or two other unsolved cases at the time of Shinichi-niichan's death."

"What case would that be?" asked Ran.

Conan slid his eyes sideways at her without moving his head. "Forty-four years old, single, blood type B, height 163 centimeters, hair black, eyes black, walked with a slight limp on his left leg due to a childhood sporting injury. He was found hung in his apartment at 6.28 PM on November the nineteenth, a little more than ten years ago. His name was Tani Keiji."

Ran stiffened, and the knuckles of her fisted hands turned white.

"Oh," she said. And then: "Kudou-san thought there was something suspicious about his – death?"

"Un," said Conan, returning his gaze to the wall. "He didn't say what, though."

"Eleven years ago... and he's not investigating anymore, you say?"

"No. He hasn't done a single thing in the field of detective-work since Shinichi-niichan's death."

"That man was a dead end, anyway," said Ran, bitterly.

Conan slanted another sideways glance at her, then smiled eagerly. "Ne, Ran-neechan, why don't we make a list of everything in these papers that's out of the ordinary? I haven't done that before. Here – " He pulled a battered, brown-stained black notebook of the kind that police officers carry about with them out of his pocket, flipped it open, and then gave a short, sharp exclamation of dismay at the sight of the ragged fringe of paper at the center fold. "I forgot..."

"I could go and get some paper," suggested Ran, pushing her chair away from the table.

"There's a package of notepaper in the library," said Conan. He replaced the notebook in his pocket and bent over the papers on the table again. "Agasa-hakase put it there for me to use. It's in the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk."

"Thanks."

The house seemed quieter than ever as Ran walked slowly down the shadowy hall to the library. The door opened noiselessly under her hand, but the sharp _click_ of the light switch jarred on the silence in a way that her quietly echoing footsteps did not. And the pale yellow electric light , contrasting with a stream of golden late-afternoon sunlight that came through a gap in the curtains, made the room seem unnaturally, coldly bright.

She paused for a moment, staring blankly at a couple of patches on the plaster wall beside the door and listening to the soft sound of her own breathing.

The sheet on the desk gave a soft, dry rustle when she pulled it off, and raised a cloud of dust from the floor where it fell. Ran knelt and pulled open the bottom right-hand drawer, and lifted out an unopened package of pencils, a pair of thick-rimmed glasses, and an empty picture frame to get at the plastic-wrapped notepaper underneath. When she draped the sheet back over the desk, it made another quiet rustle; the sound was like a sigh.

She shut the door behind her again and went back down the hallway. From the breakfast room came the sound of wood clattering on wood; when she entered a wooden pencil rolled to a stop at her feet.

"For you," said Conan, turning to look at her with another of his crinkle-eyed smiles. "I dropped it."

"Thanks," said Ran, smiling in response and retrieving the pencil. She opened the package of notebook paper, shoved the wrapper into the pocket of her coat, and sat down again, with the notepaper in front of her and the several accounts of the inquest beyond that, where she could read them.

"So then," she said, "the first thing is the time between Shinichi's departure from the Kuroba house – 'about six' it says here – and his arrival home, sometime between 7.10 and 7.30. How long does it take to get from there to here, do you know?"

"Fifteen minutes on foot," said Conan; "about seven by automobile."

"That's at least a forty minutes unaccounted for, then," said Ran. "What's in-between here and there?"

"It's a residential area," Conan informed her. "There's a few stalls a few blocks down on one or two of the streets that pass by the ones he'd have taken, but other than that it's all houses. Most of them are pretty posh, too – even more than here, I mean. Company directors and primary shareholders – that kind of people."

Ran scribbled for a moment and then looked up. "Do you know what route he took?"

Conan shook his head. "No. Agasa-hakase says he took a different one each time. But there's a map – " he pointed, and Ran pulled the yellowing paper to her and unfolded it " – and the Kuroba house is _here_, and here's where we are, so – " drawing a circle in the air above the map with his finger "he came through _this_ area."

"But he could have left it," said Ran, penciling a circle where Conan had pointed, "and we don't know whether we did or not. In an hour an ten minutes, on foot, he could get out about this far and back, right?" Conan nodded, and Ran drew another circle. "But by automobile or train – "

"About this far," said Conan.

Ran drew a third circle. "That's only if he didn't spend any time at all at his point of destination. It's probably further in – like this..." She drew another circle inside the second, another inside the third, and then slumped back in her chair. "But that's _miles_! There's no way we can go through all there and find where he went – not after ten years."

"No," said Conan, "but if we get a lead on a potential location we'll be able to check it against this and see if it's even possible."

"So then..."

"What we _can_ do is see if we can find out who was living there ten years ago, because he must have seen whatever distracted him somewhere in here." Conan pointed to the smallest circle, his round face set in a concentrated expression. "It could have been someone or something passing through, but there's no way we could trace anything like that. We'll just have to hope that it was a resident who attracted his attention."

"I see," said Ran. "So if we find out who lived there we could find out if they had a criminal record and were connected with Kudou Yuusaku?"

"Yes," said Conan, hopping out of his chair noiselessly and shoving his hands into his pockets, "but we also just want to look for a connection with the Kudou family, or even a connection with someone connected to them. That's what detection is – looking at the facts and connecting them together to form a logical chain of events. Finding someone with some kind of previous connection to the Kudou family would give us something to work with, and it's almost impossible that we shouldn't find one if we look here. And," said Conan, his blue eyes narrowed and focused on the map on the table, "when we find a connection it's only a matter of time until we find a motive, and then all we need is some sort of proof."

"Conan-kun," said Ran, half-smiling, "how old are you?"

The boy gave her a blank, wide-eyed look. "Eh? Oh... ano... seven. But 'tousan's a detective in the police, so I know a lot about detective work. And my teachers said – said I was smart for my age before. 'Tousan's really smart. He's solved _lots_ of cases." This with a proud smile.

"What's his name?"

"Oh, I can't tell you," said Conan, alarmed. "'Tousan works under a different name. It's a _secret_, Ran-neechan, or I'd tell you."

Ran bit back a laugh and turned her eyes back down to the papers on the table. "What next? There's not really a lot in these newspaper articles, is there?"

"There isn't," agreed Conan, with a frown. "I've read them over and over – there's hardly any details."

"It says that he was shot, but it doesn't give any details about that, either," noted Ran.

"The doctor gives the time of death," added Conan, "but he isn't directly quoted. No one except that one witness is directly quoted on anything, as a matter of fact."

Ran said, "Isn't it odd that the doctor who performed the autopsy flew in from Kochi to do it? And that he was 'a close friend' of Kudou-san?"

"Un! And look at that, there." Conan pointed, and Ran plucked a one-inch by two-inch clipping from its place near the articles on the inquest. She read:

" '_Doctor Gosho, previously of Kochi, has left the hospital founded by his grandfather to become the head doctor of a new hospice in southern Tokyo_.' What?"

"It's not related to the murder, as far as I can tell," said Conan, hopping back into his seat, "but we might as well write it down since it is odd. – Oh, and Agasa-hakase says that the hospice is funded largely by donations from an anonymous contributor who calls himself 'the Baron'. Put that down, too. The name of the hospice is God's Mercy Hospital. The address is – "

The boy rattled off a series of letters and numbers and Ran wrote them down.

"You have a good memory, Conan-kun."

Conan dropped his gaze. "Not really. What's next, Ran-neechan?"

"Let's see..." muttered Ran. She glanced through the _Metro Shimbun_ article again; then, frowning, reached for the other half-dozen accounts of the inquest and ran her eyes quickly down their lengths. "Here's something odd. These articles are all from the fifteenth of March. The death was the twelfth, and the inquest was the day after, according to the _Metro Shimbun_ and the _Daily Word_. There's a two-day gap between the inquest and the articles, and there usually isn't. Isn't there?"

"There isn't," said Conan. "Usually the reporter is present at the inquest and takes it all down, so it gets written up the same day and printed in the next edition due, which is usually the same day, because all of these except the _Daily Word_ have two editions per day – one in the morning and one in the evening. But that's unless the inquest is held in the private police courts, in which case the reporters will have to get an edited version of what happened from someone in the police department."

"Then that's what must have happened. It would explain why there are so many details missing, too. But why?"

Conan gave a small, irritated shrug. "I don't know, but it seems that someone was trying to hide something that was expected to come out at the inquest. The lack of details in the newspaper articles points to that, too. But _that_ suggests that there's someone connected to the murderers in the police department. Someone influential enough to close off the inquest and withhold information from the media... And that suggests that whatever Shinichi-niichan stumbled on must have been huge, if they have allies that high up in the police."

He paused, then added, "Neither Kudou Yuusaku nor Kudou Yukiko were at the inquest, did you notice? That's very odd, don't you think? Perhaps they knew something that whoever-it-was didn't want to come out at the inquest. But..."

" 'But'?"

"But if it was someone working from inside the Keishicho _against_ the Kudous," said Conan, slowly, "why let a particular friend of theirs perform the autopsy when they could easily have delegated one of the police doctors to attend to it? And then let him attend the inquest? If he noticed anything odd – during the inquest or the autopsy – he'd have been sure to tell the Kudous."

"Perhaps they wanted to – to prove something about the body," suggested Ran. "Maybe they thought the Kudous thought there was something strange about it, and either there was, and they covered it up, or it wasn't there to begin with, and they let Doctor Gosho perform the autopsy because they knew that he would report back to the Kudous and that they would trust him."

"Perhaps," said Conan, doubtfully. "I don't know, Ran-neechan... this case is so weird. Nonsensical, even. There's bits and pieces missing everywhere, and it's not even information that could have been particularly helpful to a detective. It's as if someone didn't want anyone to know _anything_ about what happened. It's... it's as if someone wanted to push everything out of sight, as quickly and quietly as possible, so that everyone would forget it had even happened."

Ran looked down at Conan's small, drawn face, and her own face softened in response to the look of puzzled, un-childlike sobriety etched into his childish features.

"Let's keep on writing things down," she said, gently. "We can write down ideas on how to find out more about the odd things, too, like we did with the time gap between Shinichi leaving the Kuroba house and getting here. Maybe there will be something I can look up before the next time I come over."

"Sure, Ran-neechan," said Conan, his face brightening instantly. "Okay. Can you come over tomorrow, too? That would be nice. What's next?"

---------------

Over two hours later Ran was on her way home, with Conan's cheerful farewell and his anxious "Remember to come tomorrow, okay, Ran-neechan? Don't forget!" still ringing in her ears, and several folded sheets of notepaper in the pocket of her coat. On one was a sketchily penciled copy of the area they were concerned with from the map, with the perimeters they had set up depicted in heavy pencil markings, so that she could mark them down on a map of her own at home. On another was a list of things Conan said they should check if they could get a transcription of the inquest. On a third were the list of "odd things" and a list of suggested explanations, and ways they could confirm or disprove their suggestions.

The apartment was cold and still empty when she entered it. Ran turned on the heater, shivering; then took a hot shower while it spluttered and coughed to life and began laboriously changing the temperature from "frigid" to "not very cold".

The heater had warmed the rooms considerably when she entered the kitchen, swathed in a blanket from her bed, and armed with a pen, more notepaper, and a map of her own. She weighed the map down with the salt-and-paper shakers, then carefully marked the boundaries she and Conan had calculated.

She had fully intended to look over the list of "odd things" again and see if there was anything she could look up the next day, but she was tired, and it was late – not to mention pleasantly warm. Her eyelids drooped, her shoulders slumped, her breathing became soft and even; and then Ran was asleep, with her brown head pillowed on her arms and her mouth curved into a half-smile.

She awoke to find her father shaking her and growling her name. Ran opened one eye and stared at him; first with faint, sleepy curiosity, and then with faint, sleepy astonishment.

The impeccable suit he'd been in earlier was now a crumpled bundle of grey cloth under his arm. It had been replaced with clothes more appropriate for a tramp than for a respectable P.I. and ex-police detective: a pair of ragged, overlarge jeans; a garish t-shirt that seemed to be a very interesting shade of neon orange under all the dirt, and a green-and-brown plaid jacket that was missing all its zippers and was stained red-brown at one cuff. When combined with yellow-and-red-striped sneakers the effect of this outfit was electrifying. Ran closed her eye.

"Oi, Ran. Ran!"

"Yes, otousan?" yawned Ran.

"What are you doing up so late?" demanded Mouri.

Ran raised her head and gazed with sleepy inquiry at the clock on the wall. "Three o'clock? I fell asleep..." And then, turning her half-lidded eyes onto her father and looking more closely at the stains on the cuff of his sleeve, she asked sharply: "Otousan, is that blood?"

The detective glanced down. "Yes," he said. "I need a beer."

"At three in the morning?" Ran asked, watching him move across the room. "Otousan, don't you think you drink too much?"

"No," said Mouri.

"But ever since okaasan – " began Ran, unhappily.

"I like beer," said Mouri.

Ran shut her mouth. After a moment she asked, "What were you doing tonight?"

"Stakeout," said her father, tilting his head and taking a deep drink from his can of beer.

"What happened?"

"Suspect was dead when we went in. Suicide. Funny," he added, jerkily, "how everyone we go to arrest in this particular case either has an accident or gets real tired of life all of a sudden. Convenient, too."

"You think there's a leak in the police?"

"Oh, yes. Can't find it, though. Careful, these people – and smart. Too smart by half."

He took another gulp of beer and leaned against the counter, staring over Ran's head with unfocused, shadowy eyed.

"Otousan?"

Mouri dropped his eyes to his daughter's face. "Huh? What?"

"I was wondering..." said Ran, carefully, her eyes on the table in front of her. "I thought that since we've been here a while now, we could get some – some flowers sometime and go visit okaasan's grave."

"No."

Ran looked up just as her father turned away, throwing his head back to get the last of the beer in the can, then smacking his lips and wiping them with the back of his hand.

"No," he repeated. "We've got better things to do than linger over the past." His voice was ragged and unsteady. "Go to bed, Ran."

Ran gathered up her papers and went.

_To Be Continued..._

* * *

**A/N**: The plot thickens... or something. 

Sorry it took me so long! Our guests kinda had a hard time leaving – which is to say that they left hours later than they'd intended, and then called back an hour later to tell us that they were three miles down the road with a leaking tire, and could they come back please? (We were pleased. They've got a baby and I got to hold him some more.)

I'm having a hard time with chapter four, on technical note, as it doesn't seem to want to start. -prods- Actually, I think I just figured out how to start it. There was something I meant to put into this chapter that did quite make it, so I can just start the next chapter with it. n.n But it may be late, too, because of Thanksgiving and all. Sorry!

Thanks very much for all the lovely reviews! -blows kisses- Happy Thanksgiving!

Ja ne!

* * *

**Japanese glossary for this chapter:**

**ano**: um

**-hakase**: professor

**-kun**: a (generally) masculine suffix indicating friendship or familiarity.

**Keishicho**: The Tokyo police force. Also known as the "Metropolitan Police Department".

**Kochi**: a town in the south of central Shikoku.

**neechan**: big sister; a suffix or nickname.

**niichan**: big brother; a suffix or nickname.

**okaasan**: mother

**otousan**: father

**un**: yeah


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: I don't own _Detective Conan_. I don't own the house I live in. I don't own the car I'm driven in. I do own my soul – oh, no, wait, never mind that. I don't own my soul, either, and Sherlock Holmes says even my life is not my own. Alas!

* * *

**Chapter Four**

* * *

"It's very nice to know which things are odd," observed Ran, "but if there's a logical sequence to these events, then I'm the Pope."

The papers were spread across the wooden tabletop again: dozens of yellowing newspaper clippings, the lettering faded to a dark, dull grey; several sheets of notebook paper covered in Agasa's thin, spidery handwriting; and there were even four or five long envelopes – the kind one gets letters in. One of them, yellow and torn around the edges, was blank; one was addressed to Agasa in a blocky, impersonal, characterless fist, and bore no return address; and the other were addressed in either neat, flowing script, or a bold, confident hand; the former, Conan had told her, belonging to Kudou Yukiko, and the latter to Kudou Yuusaku.

Ran and Conan were in their accustomed seats. Ran was leaning forward in her chair, with her elbows on the table and her chin in one hand, while the other tapped out a quick, impatient _rat-tat-tat_ on the table with a lead pencil; she had brought a notebook proper with her from home, and it lay open before her, to one side of the rapping pencil. Conan was seated at the very edge of his chair, sitting straight, with his short legs dangling and his small face full of interest.

"We can't hope to make sense of it all at once," he agreed, "but there are some of them that go together with one or two others."

"Such as?"

"Such as the visits the Kudous have made to Tokyo in the past ten years, for example. That goes with the two three break-ins and the attempted arson."

"It does?"

Conan nodded vigorously. "Un! Take a look at the dates for all of those events."

Ran pulled five sheets of notepaper and a newspaper clipping headed "Famous Actress Returns for New Movie's Premier" toward her and looked, frowning.

"The Kudous returned to Tokyo for the first time about two years after Shinichi-niichan's death, in early March," said Conan. "They did not, as far as Agasa-hakase knows, visit anyone that they had known, except Doctor Gosho in his hospice. They certainly never came near this house. Agasa-hakase didn't even know they _had_ visited until a month later, when his niece – who works in the hospice – mentioned their visit. But about a week and a half after their visit, Agasa-hakase was returning home from dinner with a friend, and from that street – " Conan gestured westward, in the direction of the street that ran perpendicular to the one of the Kudou house faced " – he saw someone climb over the back wall into the alley and then into the backyard of the person opposite here.

"They returned the second time in October of the following year, to attend the premier of the first movie Yukiko-san starred in after they left. Their proposed visit was, of course, in the newspapers, along with the date they were going to arrive. The day they arrived, one of the neighbors called the police to report that a 'suspicious character' had been lurking around the neighborhood for the past week or more. The day before _that_, Agasa-hakase came here to clean and found traces of an intruder.

"They visited in March a year later, and in June three years after that. In April Agasa-hakase found fresh scratches in the paint around the lock on the back door. In June, when they visited, Kudou-san came to see Agasa-hakase for a few minutes – alone – and then came here for several hours. Agasa-hakase says Kudou-san mentioned having visited Doctor Gosho during their conversation, and that his niece confirmed this visit for him, and that they'd come to the hospice in March the time before that. Anyway, a few days after the June visit, Agasa-hakase woke up in the middle of the night and saw light over here. He came over with his pistol, but the intruder had already left. But he _did_ find a box of matches and a pile of leaves and sticks soaked with gasoline near the back door."

"Either I'm committing the fallacy of _post hoc ergo propter hoc_," said Ran, cautiously, "or the Kudous visiting Tokyo causes someone to perpetrate criminal acts against this house. It's too regular to be a coincidence, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Conan. "And the fact that criminal act was perpetrated _before_ the visit in the one case where anyone had any warning of it says something, too."

"That it was the prospect of their arrival that caused it?"

"More likely that it was the prospect of their visiting this house that caused it, seeing as someone tried to burn it down after Kudou-san visited," said Conan.

"Oh," said Ran, startled; and then: "Of course! There must be something here they don't want seen."

"Do you think so?"

"Yes," said Ran. "Either they made a mistake and left some kind of evidence, or – Shinichi was clever, he'd have gotten some kind of record or evidence that whatever he'd seen had really happened. The police wouldn't just take the word of a little boy like that – not even if he was known to them. They must have been trying to find the evidence or the clue Shinichi left when they broke in, and they must have panicked when Kudou-san visited it and tried to destroy it completely. ... But surely," she added, suddenly doubtful, and the tapping of her pencil halted, "the police must have found it already, either way."

"I don't think so. If the police had it then _they_ would have known, since they seem to have connections there, and they wouldn't have been so worried about it. And anyway, if someone had found it, and they knew he had," said Conan, with a wry little smile, "it would be another murder we'd be investigating, not a series of panicked burglaries."

Ran was silent, and the rhythmic _rat-tat-tat_ of her pencil against the table began again.

At length she burst out, "If it's in the house, we could find it!"

"I don't know, Ran-neechan. We don't even have any idea what we're looking for."

"But we _might_ find it, and there's nothing else we can do. Not at the moment – except... otousan's working with the police right now, as a sort of contractor. I wonder if I could ask him to see if he can't get his hands on the inquest – or I'm sure he knows where they keep those things and what the rules are about seeing them. I could get it and bring a copy here."

"No," said Conan, sharply.

Startled, Ran dropped her pencil, sat up, and turned her head to look at the boy. He had started out of his chair, and his small hands were clenched into fists as his sides. Behind his bulky, thick-rimmed glasses, his eyes were narrowed, and his mouth was set in a thin, firm line.

"Why not?" asked Ran, bewildered. "What's the matter, Conan-kun?"

"It's too dangerous," said Conan firmly; and his high, childish voice had an un-childlike edge to it that was almost fearful.

"But – "

"No, listen, Ran-neechan. You _can't do that_. These are the people who killed Shinichi-niichan, remember? If you go to the police and look up that inquest, whoever it is that's protecting his killers is going to find out, and he'll remember that 'Ran' is the name of Mouri Kogoro's daughter, and that Mouri Kogoro's wife was killed in a hit-and-run _accident_ that three witnesses said was no such thing, and that the case was dismissed because of lack of evidence, because the killer died the same day – and he'll remember that Kudou Yuusaku was investigating that suicide when his son was killed, and that it's the inquest held over his son's body that you're looking at, and he'll tell _them_ and – they'll definitely kill you, too, Ran-neechan."

Ran was silent for a moment, still staring at Conan's pale, intense face. "But it's not 'definitely'," she said at last. "Why should anyone want to kill me just because there's a connection between me and someone they killed? It's a risk, I'll grant you, but if we get the inquest – "

"It's not worth risking your life over," said Conan. "Do you think Shinichi-niichan would be happy because you wanted to put yourself in danger over a ten-year-old unsolved case that no one cares about?"

"I care!" protested Ran. "I..."

She trailed off. Conan looked miserably at her and then turned away; he seemed to draw away into himself. And his small body was stiff with disapproval, and his narrow shoulders were hunched.

Ran passed her hand over her face in a weary gesture and slumped forward again. "If I'm not to be allowed to run any risk in this case, then what am I supposed to be doing – King?" she added, wryly, and only half in jest.

Instantly Conan had turned back and was beside her, his blue eyes widened earnestly. "Don't be mad," he pleaded, childishly. "I'm sorry, Ran-neechan! I'm really sorry – only I don't want you to get hurt. If they kill you then you can't help anymore, you know – so don't be mad."

She almost laughed at his imperious, childish apology; but instead she asked: "If this case if so dangerous, shouldn't we turn it over to a professional?"

"Oh, no," said Conan, confidently. "It's only dangerous if we're not careful. Besides, it's _my_ case."

His round face was once more full of cheerful determination: all traces of anger and agitation had melted away into wide eyes and a smiling mouth. Impetuously Ran reached out to smooth his untidy hair, but he ducked under her hand to retrieve her pencil and hold it out to her with solemn, attentive care.

"Fine," she said, taking the pencil. "I won't try to get the inquest – if you think it's so dangerous."

"I do think it is," said Conan, gravely. And then, cheerful once more: "Let's look for the clue, like you said, Ran-neechan. I bet we can find it."

And so they did; and this is what they found:

In the breakfast room, only the table and three chairs, and a few terra-cotta knickknacks (their interiors all quite innocent of anything bearing the slightest resemblance to a clue or a piece of evidence) in a glass-fronted cabinet. The walls and floor were clean and unmarked, except for a few scratches near the table and chairs.

In the kitchen they found a large number of pots and pans, crockery and china, and silver in the wooden cabinets; some dishrags neatly folded and stacked with a number of equally neat hand-towels in a tall, narrow cabinet. The tiled floor was newly swept, but the dust lay thick on the counters and the appliances. Ran paused to contemplate a stack of dusty dishes in a dish-drainer to the right of the dust-filled sink, and said:

"The letter they left at Agasa-hakase's house – it said not to change anything, didn't it?"

"Yes," said Conan, "except to clean, and put cloths over the furniture, and take the food out of the pantry."

"I wonder why ... Do you think they thought there was a clue, too?"

"If they had, they wouldn't have told him to move _anything_," replied Conan. "Agasa-hakase says it was probably just nostalgia."

"I see," said Ran.

In the dining-room, a large room with a long table down the center and a shelf running along all four walls high over Ran's head, they found more knickknacks, ensconced on the shelf already mentioned; and eight chairs, perched in an undignified manner on the table with their legs in the air. Ran had to go and get the step-ladder from the library in order to reach the shelf, while Conan inspected the floor, the chairs, and the underside of the shrouded table.

"I don't think Shinichi-niichan could have reached up there," Conan observed, when she had returned.

"No, but we should be thorough," said Ran, and proceeded to suit her actions to her words.

In the hall they found dust in the corners, cobwebs between the legs of the small table; there was a long-dead cricket perched on one of the silk leaves of the fake tree, and a crack near the bottom edge of the pot.

In the small bathroom off the hall there were only towels and rags, an artistic basket full of artistic seashells, and on the wall, an equally artistic (though rather abstract) painting in muted golds and grey-blues. Conan dutifully examined the floor near the door, but wandered into the next room – the little foyer that led to the back door – before Ran was half done inspecting the artistic seashells to see if they had messages hidden in them.

In the foyer leading to the back door they found a snakeskin in a corner, a dusty coat and hat hanging on a dusty coat-rack; and a substantial amount of lint in the pockets of the coat.

In the living room there was furniture: two couches, a loveseat, two armchairs, three end-tables, three table-lamps, two tall lamps, a long, low, bare cabinet near the door, a bookcase with glass doors, and curio cabinet filled with more pottery figurines. That room yielded nothing of interest – until Ran, turning to inspect the cabinet by the door, caught sight of a large dent on the wall immediately above it.

"Conan-kun, come look at this," she called.

Conan looked, first with a brow-furrowing frown; then with an expression of wide-eyed comprehension. "This is where those first editions were – the ones that were stolen," he exclaimed. "Look – see those scratches there, and there, and here? That's where the glass cases were – the ones that were broken. They were metal on the bottom, that's why it's scratched. And..." He frowned contemplatively at the depression on the wall: it was a long, shallow dent that was about an inch wide at the top but widened and deepened as it descended, and whatever had caused it had also scraped some of the pale beige paint off.

"Ah!" said Conan.

He darted into the hallway, and Ran, following confusedly, found him standing impatiently next to the fake tree, with the cloth that had covered it settling to the floor with wild flutterings, like some huge, fantastic moth.

"It's too heavy," he complained, almost in a whine. "Can you tilt it up, Ran-neechan?"

Still puzzled, Ran nodded, then knelt, and, grasping the cracked side of the pot, tilted it up until the fake tree's trunk was almost parallel with the floor. And there, on the bottom edge of the pot, was a crinkled strip of beige paint.

"Ah," said Conan, satisfied.

"They used this pot to break the cases?" said Ran, and set the pot back down carefully.

"Because they didn't bring anything with them to break the glass, since they didn't come here for the books in the first place," said Conan, smugly. "Agasa-hakase says it was pretty thick. And the paint is on the bottom, so they probably held it upright, with one hand on the trunk and one on the edge. That's awkward – hence the dent in the wall where they misjudged the distance – but if they'd swung it by the trunk, which would be the most natural way, the pot could have slipped off and shattered. That wouldn't do, since they wanted the police to think they were burglars who had come prepared for the job. You know," he added, eyebrows lowering pensively, "I'm beginning to think these people can't be _that_ important – or numerous.. They're far too clumsy... if the rest of them were running about and messing up murders like this, they'd be found out almost instantly."

"Nobody else seems to have noticed," Ran pointed out.

"Oh, your average newspaper-reader buys contradictions at a dime a dozen and swallows them whole," returned Conan. "But then the police – it's their job to notice things, and they haven't, which makes me think again that the murderers must be part of something very big, or very influential, or both..."

"Or perhaps it's just that these two have a particular friend who happens to be in a very influential position in the Keishicho," suggested Ran, replacing the sheet on the potted tree.

"H'm," said Conan doubtfully. He stared at the bulky sheeted shape in front of him for a moment, then shrugged and said, eagerly, "Let's check behind that cabinet for shards of glass, Ran-neechan."

But the proposed search yielded no results, and they went on to the library.

This is what they found in the library: On the floor to the left of the door, a small spot, no more than five inches in diameter, where the polish had been scrubbed off ("Probably by a wire brush," said Conan. "Look at those scratches."); a great deal of dust; and several bookmarks, because they examined the shelves up to a little further than Conan could reach.

"Because I'm small for my age," explained Conan. He peered behind _The Sign of Four_ and then pulled it out of its spot, gingerly and carefully, and shook it gently by its spine to see if anything fell out of it – which nothing did.

The desk they divided in half. On Ran's side she found several notebooks filled with Kudou Yuusaku's notes on some of his earlier cases; a molding, mouse-eaten paperback novel in English; a compartmented tray that contained a number of stamps, paper clips, pens with their ink long dried into black dust, short stubs of pencils with the erasers gone, two hand-held erasers, a small manual pencil sharpener, and a great deal of crumbling pencil shavings; there was also an address-book in Kudou Yukiko's fine handwriting; an unopened package of pencils; a prescription bottle of extra-strength painkillers made out to Kudou Yuusaku, with the wrong kanji for "Kudou"; a bulky piece of equipment that looked like a primitive iPod; and the program for a play dated eleven years previously.

Conan reported his findings as such: a few unopened packages of lined notebook-paper; an unopened package of pencils; three empty picture frames; a pair of glasses; the type-written first draft of a mystery Kudou Yuusaku had been working on at the time of Shinichi's death, entitled "The Night Count" with the word "Count" crossed out and a list of other titles scribbled untidily underneath it (Earl, Marquis, Duke, Baron, Knight – also crossed out – Baronet, Viscount); a number of opened bills; a broken pocket-knife; a pipe with an empty tobacco-pouch; and a long-abandoned mouse-nest made, for the most part, of strips of paper with bits of English words on them.

"If there's a clue in all this," said Conan, irritably, "it's probably that what they're hiding is that they stabbed Shinichi-niichan to death with a pencil instead of shooting him."

Ran shuddered. "Please don't joke like that, Conan-kun."

"Sorry," said Conan, unrepentant. He shoved his hands into his pockets and wandered around to the side of the desk that faced the door. After a moment of staring at the back of the desk blankly, he asked, "Did you see this, Ran-neechan?"

"I don't know," said Ran, without moving. "What is it?"

"There's a bloodstain on the back of the desk, here, right above the one on the floor," he said, pointing and narrowing his eyes thoughtfully. "And here's a scratch on the desk, too... Suppose Shinichi-niichan were to stand here, with his back to the door, messing about with something on the desk, and then turn around, pulling something off the desk, and scratching it when he did – " He imitated to movement, so that he faced the door with his back to the desk and Ran. "And then suppose he was shot, and fell back against the desk, and then to the floor."

Ran shivered.

"H'm," said Conan, eyes fixed on the wall by the door. "Ne, Ran-neechan, if I fired a gun from here, aiming at a man of about average height coming through the doorway, and I missed, the bullet would go about where those two patches on the wall are, don't you think?"

"You think Shinichi _shot_ at them?" Ran started from her place behind the desk to look closer at the plaster patches.

"Why not? Kudou-san had a gun, and it would explain why the neighbor heard three shots when Shinichi-niichan was only hit once. It could also explain that scrubbed bit on the floor – there's a line between this spot on the desk and those patches on the wall, and that spot is on it. Perhaps he nicked one of them enough that he bled."

Ran had picked away at the plaster with her fingers until two neat, round holes were revealed. "It must be," she said, almost incredulously; and then, dusting bits of plaster off her fingers and turning away, "I think I've committed a felony. This is criminal damage, isn't it? ... But I'm glad."

"You already committed one when you broke in," Conan told her. "Why are you glad?"

"Because he fought back," said Ran; but Conan's face went blank and uncomprehending. "It means he wasn't helpless. You – you never knew him, but he was always so confident, and I looked up to him because of that... It was – difficult – to think of him defenseless."

"I see."

Ran gave herself a little shake and went to pull the cloth back over the desk. "Let's go to the next room."

"Kudou-san's study is locked," remarked Conan. "Agasa-hakase says he always kept it like that."

"Oh," said Ran, pausing. "Well, I guess I've committed enough felonies this day. We can skip it."

This is what they found in Shinichi's room:

Dust; dust that could not have been disturbed in all of the ten years since the boy's death. It lay thick over everything in the room, and before they could look at anything they had to get a broom and a cupful of water, which they sprinkled to settle it before they swept.

When the dust had been cleared away, they found a single twin-sized bed with blue and white linens; a small bookcase that held a number of elementary textbooks, the complete Sherlock Holmes in Japanese, and two upper-level history books; a desk accompanied by a swivel chair; and on or in the desk a table-lamp, a cup full of pencils and pens, a cracked magnifying-glass, several folders full of homework (one for each subject), and a notebook filled with notes in confident, bold, childish scrawl. And a bedside table with another lamp and a book laid open, cover-up, on it.

And when Ran picked up the book, dusted off the spine, and shook it to dislodge the dust from the dry, yellowing pages, she also dislodged a small photograph that fluttered to the floor at her feet; and when she had stooped to retrieve it, she stood still, holding it between hers fingers and looking at it.

It was not a remarkable picture, except that it was a little crooked. It was only a picture of a little girl, about six years old – a little girl in a yellow dress and a red sweater, who sat on a wind-weathered park bench with her small hands in her lap and her small shoulders squared, her long brown hair blown into her face in tangled strands. She was smiling at the camera: it was a child's happy, trusting smile; it reached all the way to her dark eyes.

"That's _me_," said Ran, staring.

Conan had come to stand beside her and look with mild interest at the picture; now he glanced up at her.

"I remember when Shinichi took that," said Ran, slowly. "Agasa-hakase had made him a camera that looked like a lunch-box. He told me Agasa-hakase was always making him things like that – that he was working on something else and was almost finished. He was going to bring it for me to see the next day... But," said Ran, "that was the day my mother died, and I never saw him again."

Conan was silent.

"I wish I had a picture of him," said Ran, almost in a whisper.

"What for?" said Conan, blankly.

"I – to tell the truth, I'm very bad about remembering faces," said Ran, and laughed a little laugh that was more brittle than amused. "It's pathetic, given that I'm a detective's daughter. But I – I can't remember. I even have to..."

A frenzied beeping from her wristwatch interrupted her. She looked down at it uncomprehendingly, and then exclaimed, "Oh! It's time for me to go home. I'm sorry, Conan-kun. I'm sure we'll find out something later."

"We found out a lot already, anyway," said Conan, following her to the back door. "Can you come tomorrow, Ran-neechan?"

"I don't know," said Ran, wearily, considering schoolwork, and homework, and Sonoko's newfound passion for homemade cookies. "I'll try."

"Okay," said Conan, cheerfully. "I'll lock up. See you later, Ran-neechan."

"Later," said Ran.

And then she went home, where she washed the dust off her hands and face, and almost burned her father's dinner.

_To Be Continued..._

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**A/N**: Okay, so I have a really good excuse this time. My little sister's appendix ruptured, and she's in the hospital recovering from a surgery that will hopefully fix the problem without having her appendix removed becoming necessary. Ugh. Poor thing. 

Otherwise, I started this chapter on November 22nd, and wrote less than five hundred words in five days, so I trashed the first draft and started over on November 27th. I finished about 2.30 A.M. December 1st. I think maybe I should start all of my chapters wrong and have to re-do them. It seems to give them more body – which is to say that I thought there wasn't enough material in this chapter, and was actually intending to splice it with chapter five; but it turned out to be eighteen and a half pages long on paper (I write about 180 words per page) and nine and a half on MSWord. I actually had to push material I'd intended for this one into another chapter. Whoop!

Furthermore, I promise not to make any more promises about when chapters might or might not come out, because said promises do not seem to be conducive to the fulfillment of said promises.

Thanks for all the beautiful reviews!

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**Japanese glossary for this chapter:**

**-hakase**: professor

**-kun**: a (generally) masculine suffix indicating friendship or familiarity.

**Keishicho**: The Tokyo police force. Also known as the "Metropolitan Police Department".

**neechan**: big sister; a suffix or nickname.

**niichan**: big brother; a suffix or nickname.

**otousan**: father

**un**: yeah


	5. Chapter 5

I don't own Detective Conan. If I did the fans would have done something really horrible to me for the month-long delay in updating.

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**Chapter Five**

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The next day was grey.

It began with a murky dawn, a relentless drizzle descending from dirty-grey clouds, and a sharp, cold wind that blew umbrellas inside-out and cut to the bone through the thickest clothing. The drizzle slowed, lightened, and then ceased within an hour of dawn, but the flat grey clouds remained, lowering from horizon to horizon; and the little sunlight that made its way through their dull mass was of a dim, grey-yellow hue that tinted everything sallow-pale, so that white buildings looked old and filthy, the brightest clothing became blurred and dull, and the skin of anyone unlucky enough to be outside on such a day appeared flat and sickly.

And for the first time since her arrival in Tokyo months earlier, Mouri Ran was late for school. She stumbled into her first class ten minutes after it had started, bleary-eyed and incoherently apologetic – her incoherence due not to slurred speech, but to the fact that she kept forgetting to speak in her native tongue, lapsing into American English every fifth word.

By the end of her last class, her wide-eyed attempts to pay attention to various teachers had lapsed to a weary determination to at least keep her eyes open; but she was awake enough to grin when Sonoko perched herself on the edge of her desk and, arms outstretched dramatically, announced:

"The great, the excellent, the mostly-A-plus Mouri Ran, has been _late_ for class. Ten _minutes_ late," said she, with a frown that was a mixture of mock-sternness and inquisitive concern. Then she tilted her head to one side and subjected her friend to a full half a minute of a look that was all sharp scrutiny before delivering the verdict.

"You look _terrible_."

"Thank you," said Ran, dryly.

"You really do!"

"I don't doubt it."

"You're pale, and you've got circles under your eyes and wrinkles in your uniform. And there's a rats' nest in your hair." Sonoko's long, deft fingers plucked at the offending locks gently. "Did something happen?"

"What happened was that I forgot to set my alarm clock," said Ran, "and otousan left for work in the middle of the night, so I overslept."

"Up late?" asked Sonoko.

" 'Late'!" repeated Ran, and pillowed her head on her arms. "No. I went to bed in plenty of time, only – I had a nightmare and woke up, and I couldn't get back to sleep until past five this morning."

"A _nightmare_ kept you awake all night?"

"I went to sleep once," said Ran, muffled, "and I dreamed it again."

"What was it about?"

"Nothing," said Ran, stiffly. "Where's Kazuha-chan?"

"With Hattori-kun and the transfers – Oh! You weren't here when they were introduced," said Sonoko, hopping off the desk eagerly and leaning her elbows on it instead. "The blonde one talking to Kazuha-chan and Hattori-kun – I heard he's half-English – and the other one by the window. Aren't they cute? Oh, look, Hattori-kun's bringing them to meet us!"

Ran raised her head to look. Hattori and Kazuha were indeed making their way towards her, with the two news boys in tow. The blonde one, she saw, was entirely entitled to the be called "cute": his hair looked natural, he had broad shoulders and a fine smile, and his features were a not unpleasant mix of Japanese and European. The other one was half-turned away, and all she could see of him was that he had untidy black hair and good posture.

"Afternoon, neechan," Hattori greeted her, stopping by her desk. "You didn't meet the transfers, did you? This" gesturing towards the blonde one "is Hakuba Saguru, a – friend of mine. This is Mouri Ran, Hakuba. Mouri Kogoro's daughter, you know. And this fellow" with a jerk of his thumb towards the other, who was loitering with his hands in his pockets and his face turned towards the window "is Kuroba Kaito."

Ran started at the mention of the boy's name, and glanced over at him quickly. He turned his head to look at her in response to her involuntary movement, and her glance became a stare.

Kuroba Kaito had a face at once boyish and sophisticated. The shapes of his bones were fine under his tanned skin; his mouth was a wide, confident, impersonal curve; his nose was not long enough to look scholarly and not short enough to seem pugnacious, but blandly in the middle; his forehead was hidden under a shock of thick, untidy black hair that fell into his face, over his arched eyebrows. As for his eyes –

Conan has blue eyes, thought Ran.

This boy's eyes were blue, too: the very same deep blue with a hint of grey around the pupils, but there the similarities ended. Conan's eyes were sometimes wide with interest or worry, sometimes narrowed in concentration; they were never half-lidded and vague – vague, with an unreadable glint – the way Kuroba's were as he turned to return her gaze. But as Hattori finished his introduction and turned to say something to Hakuba, the lazy eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and the lax line of the mouth firmed, and the glint became a spark of interest, until Kuroba's angular, impassive face and Conan's round, determined face could have belonged to one and the same person.

Then Kuroba said "Pleased to meet you, Mouri-chan," and the hint of amusement in his drawling voice made Ran flush and drop her gaze apologetically.

"_Pleased_ – " she began, in English, and then hastily switched to Japanese. "Gomen ne. Pleased to meet you too, Kuroba-kun."

"Wretched weather, isn't it?" said Kuroba, cheerfully.

"It is," said Ran. She took her eyes off Kuroba's face long enough to glance out the window at the grey-black clouds and the bits of trash being blown along the sidewalk. "It's the worst I've seen since I was here."

"Since – ? Oh, of course. You were in America; now I remember. I've heard of your father. He's with the police, isn't he?"

"Not anymore," said Ran. "He sometimes works as a sort of civilian contractor with them, though. ... I've heard of your father, too," she added, after a moment. "Kuroba Toichi, wasn't it? I saw one of his shows when I was younger. It was wonderful."

Kuroba's face lit up. "Thanks. My father was the greatest magician in the world."

From beside him, Hakuba interrupted a remark to Sonoko in order to mutter "Your filial piety is as steadfast as ever," in English.

"I don't hear you complaining about my career choices when you want my help," retorted Kuroba in Japanese, leaning over and deftly plucking a stuffed hippopotamus dyed a fascinating shade of pink from Hakuba's ear. "By the way, isn't it time you stopped bringing this to school?"

"Ha, ha," returned the other, stoically. "Show-off."

"I admit that an appreciative audience is a thing I delight in," said Kuroba, "but you know what they say."

"What do they say?"

" 'It takes one to know one'," said Kuroba, grinning, and bowed politely to his spluttering friend.

"That's not true," interjected Hattori. "What about detectives discovering criminals?"

"I said 'know', not 'find out'," grumbled Kuroba genially. "You detectives are such critics, always pulling a man to pieces and then wanting to incarcerate him as well."

"But if you look – "

Ran missed the rest of Hattori's reply, as Sonoko had edged over beside her and was saying, in an undertone, "I suppose you're too tired to bake cookies, aren't you?"

"What? No, nothing of the sort," said Ran, straightening. "As a matter of fact, I'd _like_ some company, to help chase out the ghaisties and ghoulies and three-legged beasties."

"The what?"

"Ghosts," said Ran. "Would you mind if I invited Kuroba-kun and Hakuba-kun, too?"

"Oh, no," said Sonoko.

" – that a thief won't necessarily balk at committing a different crime of a morally indefensible nature," finished Hakuba, smugly. Hattori looked amused and Kuroba smilingly obstinate; Kazuha was sorting through a stack of papers with a contemplative frown on her face.

"Would you like to come over and bake cookies today?" asked Ran, adding, "Hakuba-kun and Kuroba-kun too, of course. If you'd like."

"Cookies?" said Kuroba, brightening. "Count me in."

"You're likelier to get a warm welcome at her house than at your own, anyway," said Hakuba. "Isn't Aoko-chan still staking out the front?"

"At least there aren't any frogs in my house," retorted Kuroba.

"What these two mean," said Hattori to Ran, "is 'Thank you very much; we'd be delighted'. We can come too, can't we, Kazuha?"

"Of course," said Kazuha.

So less than half an hour later they were all at Ran's apartment: the boys in the living room ("Out of the way of us professionals," as Sonoko put it) with the television turned to a sports channel and their voices occasionally raised in amiable dispute over some point in the game; Ran, Sonoko, and Kazuha in the kitchen, discussing the boys in much lower tones.

"Hakuba-kun has come over to Heiji's father's house before, so we've met," Kazuha was saying. "He's working with Heiji and Heiji's father on that big case. Where are the mixing bowls, Ran-chan?"

"In the cabinet to the left of the sink. What case is that, Kazuha-chan?"

"We-ell, I don't really know. They won't tell me anything about it, so what I know is just what I overhear on accident. Is over here all right to set them down? – But I've gathered that they're trying to track down someone; maybe more than one someone, from the time it's taking them."

"I thought Hattori-kun was a genius who solved cases in split seconds," remarked Sonoko, measuring sugar into a mixing-bowl. "Has he lost his touch?"

"It's not just Heiji, I told you – and he only started helping when we transferred here, anyway. His father's been working on it for years, though, from what I heard. Hakuba-kun and Kuroba-kun are in it too."

"Kuroba-kun is?" queried Ran. "Here's a whisk, Sonoko... I've heard of Hakuba-kun before – it was that Humming Jewel case, I think – but Kuroba-kun isn't a detective, is he?"

"I don't know," admitted Kazuha. "I don't _think_ he is, because Heiji never mentioned him before like he did Hakuba-kun, and I'd never seen him before today. Most of the others come over at least once a week. Megure-keibu, Shiratori-san, Satou-san, Takagi-san, Chiba-san – your father comes over almost every day, Ran-chan, but Kuroba-kun never does."

"Otousan does?"

Kazuha stopped mid-stir to turn and look at Ran's blank face. "Didn't you know?" she asked. "He's been on it from the beginning – whenever that was. Heiji told me he was one of the first detectives to start working on it."

"I didn't know," said Ran, shortly.

"Why not?" said Sonoko, inquisitively.

"Otousan doesn't like to talk about his work," said Ran quietly, "and I don't ask – often. I think he's afraid I'll want to get involved and end up getting hurt."

"Being a detective sounds a lot less romantic when you talk about it like that," complained Sonoko.

"Well, now we know why Sherlock Holmes was a bachelor, anyway," said Kazuha. "He didn't want to have a nervous breakdown, worrying over whether the black hats would go after the wife and kids. Cookie sheet, Ran-chan?"

"Here," said Ran. "It was because he only met one woman he admired, and she was married, _and_ he thought it would impair his judgment. Most story-book detectives aren't married, it seems."

" 'Impair his judgment'?" queried Sonoko, eyebrows arched.

"Well, I'd like to see _you_ try and detect things with a wife hanging over your shoulder and forever giving you her opinion on things she doesn't know anything about," said Ran, dryly.

"I wouldn't; that's not socially acceptable," Sonoko retorted. "Likely they didn't often marry because there aren't enough women desperate enough to put up with having a polygamist for a husband."

"A polygamist?"

"What else would you call a man married to his work the way detectives are?"

Kazuha grinned wryly and Ran clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a peal of laughter.

"Although," said Sonoko, with a look like a pleased cat, "I was under the impression that detectives remained single in order to be better able to seduce female criminals and spies."

"Objection!" said Kazuha.

"You're getting your genres confused, Sonoko," chided Ran. "That's not 'mystery', it's 'trashy romance novel masquerading as mystery'. They don't count."

"What does, then?"

"Ellery Queen," said Kazuha promptly.

"Didn't he have a string of girlfriends?"

"I thought it was just one," said Ran.

"Girlfriends count anyway. The villains kidnap them even more than they do wives," said Sonoko.

"That's because there are more girlfriends than wives," pointed out Ran. "Inspector Felse was married, though."

"Inspector who?"

"Felse," said Kazuha. "He was one of Ellis Peters' detectives. Brother Cadfael wasn't married..."

"That's because he was a monk," said Ran. "And he never seduced anyone, either."

"Neither did Miss Marple – "

"The ones that count are boring," complained Sonoko.

"Not 'boring', 'respectable'," corrected Ran. "Hercule Poiroit – he wasn't married, but there was that Russian woman... was she Russian?"

"I don't remember," said Kazuha. "But wasn't Dashiell Hammett's detective – what's his name – Sam Spade? – wasn't he married at one point?"

"Yes, to the girl in _The Maltese Falcon_," said Ran. "And Lord Peter married in the last book, but Sherlock Holmes never did."

"What about Irene Adler?" asked Sonoko.

"All he did was admire her mind. It doesn't even count as a romance."

"What kind of parents name their child 'Sherlock', anyway?" demanded Sonoko, irrelevantly.

"The kind that name their other child 'Mycroft'," suggested Kazuha. "I'll set the timer. Ten minutes, right, Ran-chan?"

"Right, but the timer on the stove is broken," said Ran. "Sonoko, can you get the other timer out of my bedroom? It's on the desk."

"I hear and obey, O Pharaoh," said Sonoko, mock-devoutly, and already halfway through the door. She left it open behind her, and through the now open doorway, Hattori's voice carried clearly into the room, raised over the quiet, muffled sound of a sports commentator turned down low:

"…But there's no evidence to link him to it. He and Baari never met … and the old building where all the records were stored conveniently caught fire and burned to the ground a few years ago."

Kuroba spoke indistinctly, in querulous tone of voice.

"Bribed, probably," said Hattori's voice, blandly. "He said he was checking out a noise on the other side of the building. He's retired now, but we don't dare go near him for fear of causing another 'accident'."

"There they go again," said Kazuha, her expression a combination of amused irritation and fondness. "They talked about it all the way to school, too – oh, yes, it's a secret," she added, in response to Ran inquiring look, "but they use codenames for everything so I still don't understand much about it. This 'Baari', though, I've heard of a lot. He's dead, and he's either a criminal or a victim, but I can never figure out which."

"Perhaps he's both," suggested Ran. "Thanks, Sonoko. Set it on the table, please."

"You're welcome," said Sonoko, shutting the door behind her. "What are you talking about?"

"Codenames," explained Kazuha. "Heiji's father is 'Cap' because of his family name being Hattori. _Hat_ is hat in English, see, and _cap_ is another English word for a hat. Heiji's called 'Kappa' because it sounds similar to 'Cap', and Hakuba is 'Chairo' because he likes tea. They call Kuroba-kun 'Gaki', and your father is 'Ichiro'. Then there's another - he never comes over but they talk about him a lot - that they call 'the Peer'. Funny name."

"This case," said Ran, carefully. "What is it about?"

"It beats me," scowled Kazuha. "Sometimes it sounds like they're talking about a murder, and sometimes like smuggling, and once Heiji said something about arson, and several times it's been blackmail."

"Sounds like the Mafia to me," laughed Sonoko. "Your father doesn't do things by halves, does he?"

"Oh, it couldn't be," said Ran, turning to Kazuha. "Could it? It isn't, is it?"

"I don't _think_ so," said Kazuha, "but – I wouldn't put it past them." Her lips curved in a smile that was half-grimace.

"I meant it for a joke," said Sonoko, taken aback. "No one would really take the Mafia on. You girls worry a lot, don't you?"

"You would too if you were a detective's daughter," retorted Ran. "It's not exactly all sunshine and roses – funerals have a tendency to dampen the spirit."

"Do a lot of people die doing detective work?" asked Sonoko.

Ran and Kazuha exchanged glances. "Enough," said the Osakan, after a moment. "And it's not just policemen, either ... sometimes a criminal will kill someone to cover up a previous crime. As often as not it's just someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but then policemen have the record for that kind of appearance – if you think of 'wrong place, wrong time' from the criminal's point of view."

The kitchen door swung open and Hattori leaned into the room. "Thinking from the criminal's point of view is important for detectives," he remarked. "Are the cookies done yet?"

"Ahou!" said Kazuha. "They've only been in the oven for two minutes. We haven't even started cleaning up."

"We're not _going_ to clean up," said Sonoko, in a meaning manner. "Guess who is."

Hattori chuckled and turned back to the other room. "Oi, Kuroba," he said. "If you want any cookies you're going to have to stop arguing with Hakuba over criminal morality and come in here to help clean up."

"_What _morality?" demanded Hakuba's voice.

"You too, Hakuba. Stop teasing the kid and get over here."

"Well, then," said Sonoko, cheerfully, and moving towards the door, "we'll just stay out of your way. Where's that book I lent you last week, Ran? Are you done with it?"

"In my room," said Ran. "I'll go get it – or you can come with me – hold on, I forgot to put away my sweater..." She darted across the living room to the couch, where she had bundled it untidily away in a corner the night before, then followed Sonoko and Kazuha to her room.

Sonoko had retrieved her book from the shelf by Ran's bed and was flipping through the pages aimlessly. "Listen to those boys in the kitchen," she said.

"I am," said Ran, moving to hang the sweater in her closet. Kuroba was singing loudly in slurred English, accompanied by the sounds of running water and the two detectives' protesting voices. "He has quite a – " she began, and then caught sight of a glossy corner protruding from the sweater's pocket. "Oh..."

"What is it?" asked Sonoko.

"Just a photo," said Ran quickly, without turning. "I was looking at it with a – with a friend last night, and I forgot to give it back when it was time to leave."

Sonoko bounced off the bed and came to stand behind her friend, looking over her shoulder at the crooked photograph in her hand. "Aww, is that you, Ran? You were awful cute when you were little!"

"Thanks," said Ran, shortly, and dropped it into the pocket of her skirt.

"Is that from before you left for America?" persisted Sonoko. "How old were you when it was taken?"

"Six," said Ran, slipping the sweater onto a hanger and hooking the hanger over the bar. "It was few weeks before we left."

"Who took it? Your parents?"

"No," said Ran, backing towards the door. "A friend. I've, ano, I'm going to go and – and check on the cookies. The oven is hotter than it says it is."

The three boys had finished cleaning and spilled back into the living room, where they were discussing the game on the screen loudly and passionately; Ran went into the kitchen quickly and shut the door, then slumped into one of the chairs without a glance in the direction of the stove.

"I'm tired," she said, aloud, "and irrational. And probably a thief." She rubbed her forehead drearily and frowned up at the clock on the wall. "I'll take it back. As soon as – as soon as they've left."

An hour later she stood at the window of the apartment and waited until Sonoko had disappeared around a corner, happily swinging a bag full of cookies, before she shrugged on her coat and set off for the Kudou house.

_To Be Continued..._

* * *

**A/N**: I think I win a prize for "most useless chapter ever", but I intended for this story to be slow-paced from the beginning, so I guess it's fine. And um ... sorry for the long wait. I'm sure there are a number of things I could blame it on, but I've misplaced my list, so I'll just apologise. I'm sorry! 

Also I'm sorry if it's horrible. I wrote it all in bits and pieces so, well, if you were wondering about those bits of baling-wire threaded through the paragraphs at inconvenient intervals, that's why. I have no idea how I'm supposed to organise my hand-written draft so I can staple it, since part of page nine is scribbled on the back of page seven. And I'm not even going to _mention_ the margins.

My sister has recovered from her ailment, and joined us back at home a few weeks ago. Thanks for your concern and patience!

Thank you also for all your reviews. It's really fun for me to read all the ideas about what's going to happen (or what has happened), and your support means a lot to me.

* * *

**Japanese glossary for this chapter:**

**ahou**: idiot

**ano**: um

**chairo**: brown. Actually a combination of _cha_, tea, and _iro_, color; so that the Japanese word for 'brown' literally means 'tea-colored'.

**gaki**: brat

**gomen ne**: sorry

**Ichiro**: Japanese name meaning 'first son'.

**kappa**: a mythological creature. I've seen it translated as 'water demon', but all I remember about it is that it drowns people.

**otousan**: father

* * *

**Review replies:**

**Lurker** said: _(I)t's even worse than I thought. _

_The sad part is, you MIGHT have a good STORY here...but a critical reader (...) isn't going to be able to focus on that past all the bad writing cliches going on here._

_There's "richly descriptive" and then there's "ridiculously irrelevant". Your prose falls into the latter category when you start talking about "scudding clouds" and "doubtful flurries". At this point, I was seriously laughing so hard at the ridiculous prose that I ceased wondering whether the story itself was worth continuing to read._

_There are about a thousand websites dedicated to teaching aspiring writers what NOT to do. I suggest you avail yourself of them posthaste._

Thank you for taking the time to review! I'm glad my prose amused you, and that you think this story has potential. It is rather clichéd, isn't it? However (as Diana Wynne Jones once said), clichés are clichés because they work; otherwise people would stop using them. Also, I am not the least bit anxious to be original. I _love_ clichés. I _live_ for clichés. (You can imagine me laughing a mad sort of laugh here, if you like.)

I duplicated the relevant parts of your second review here because I was obliged to delete it from the 'reviews' page. There's no way to edit them; and while I invite (and may even enjoy) criticism of myself and my work, I neither invite nor enjoy snide remarks about the people who are generous enough to overlook my ridiculously irrelevant prose in order to read the story. I'm sure you understand. Thanks again for reviewing!


	6. Chapter 6

Insert standard disclaimer here.

* * *

**Chapter Six**

* * *

The door was unlocked, but when Ran pushed it open it was so quiet that at first she thought Conan was not there; however, when she called his name softly and tentatively there was a sound of wood scraping on wood, and he came into the hall from the breakfast room, inquiry written large on his small face.

"I thought you said you couldn't come over today, Ran-neechan."

Ran shut the door behind her. "I wasn't going to, but something came up, and I thought I should tell you. Kuroba Kaito transferred into my school today."

Conan's round face went blank, and there was a moment of silence. Then: "Kuroba?" he echoed. "Kuroba Toichi's son? Shinichi-niichan's friend?"

"Unless there are two Kuroba Kaitos with magician fathers named Toichi," said Ran. "I asked. And – I don't know that it has anything to do with us, but he's somehow caught up in a case my father is working on."

"How did that happen, Ran-neechan?"

"I'm not sure. I'll tell you what I know. But before that – " said Ran, taking the photograph out of her pocket and holding it out to the boy, " – this. I forgot to give it back."

"You can keep it," said Conan.

"No," said Ran. "I can't."

She placed it face-down on the shrouded table beside her. "My friends were asking questions," and her voice sounded strained and unnatural even to her; she paused for a moment and then continued lightly: "But it's our case, so I didn't tell them anything."

Conan's gaze sharpened and focused on her in much the same way Kuroba's had earlier that day, but when he spoke, it was only to say: "Are you cold, Ran-neechan? You keep twisting your hands together."

Startled, Ran looked down at her pale hands. "Yes, I – I was in a hurry, and I forgot to put my gloves on."

The boy watched her quizzically, his head tilted to one side, while she fished her leather gloves out of the pockets she kept them in and slipped them on. Then he spoke again: "Let's sit down and you can tell me, Ran-neechan."

"On the floor?"

"I _cleaned_ it," said Conan reproachfully, sitting down Indian-style, and then resting his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, blue eyes fixed expectantly on Ran's face. "Bedtime story for Conan-kun, Ran-neechan," he added, with a lopsided grin. "What case was this again?"

Ran laughed, and the sharp look in Conan's eyes vanished into his responsive smile. "Fine," she said, and folded up across the hall from him with her knees hugged to her chest. "It has to be quick, though, because I need to make supper for otousan."

But when she spoke it was slowly and carefully, and several times she stopped altogether, gathering her thoughts for the next sentence or word, and all the time keeping her eyes on the floor at her feet. Conan's straightforward stare never wavered, and he interrupted only twice. The first was to ask if Kazuha had any idea how long the detectives had been engaged in this case – "She didn't say," Ran told him – and the second was while Ran was carefully repeating the code names which Kazuha had mentioned. Then his eyebrows lowered, and he said:

"Baari?"

Ran broke off and looked up at him for the first time since she had begun speaking. "That's right," she said, uncertainly. "Why?"

"In a minute," said Conan. "Go on, Ran-neechan."

There was not much left. Ran finished rather vaguely with, "Sonoko thought it might be the Mafia – only she was joking, and then I found the photograph and they were asking questions so I thought I should bring it back and tell you what Kazuha said. I needed to get it out of the house."

The blank look came back over Conan's small face. "Why?"

"I don't know what it was," said Ran. "It just bothered me – Sonoko asking about it. Why did you ask about Baari?"

Conan's face cleared. "It's because of the meaning. 'Baari' is how we would write the English word _valley_, right?"

"Val–" began Ran, querulously, in Japanese, and then stopped, open-mouthed.

"See?" said Conan. " 'Baari' is _valley_, which is 'Tani' – so I wondered if it was the same one. And if Kudou-san was right, our Tani was a murderer and a victim, like theirs. Also 'the Peer' –"

"But," interrupted Ran, "but there are millions of people called Tani. And Kazuha said it was lots of cases – why wouldn't otousan _tell _me if he was investigating that case?"

Conan opened his mouth, closed it, and then said slowly, "If I was your father – there would be one very good reason I could think of not to tell you about that case."

Ran was silent.

"Ran-neechan," said Conan, carefully, "maybe you shouldn't..."

"Don't," said Ran.

"But if – "

"You're the one who asked me to help," said Ran, almost belligerently. "And I – I'm not going to back out of this just because it's dangerous. _You_ haven't. Anyway," she added, "if otousan is investigating them, I'm already in danger. This way at least I'm in danger on my own account."

"I see," said Conan. He smiled, but above the curved lips his blue eyes were fixed on her in a way that made her think first of shuttered windows, and then of the careful disinterest that was Kuroba Kaito's default expression.

"Conan-kun," said Ran, "you look a lot like Kuroba-kun."

The startled expression that flashed across Conan's face severed the resemblance, and then faded into mild curiosity. "Do I really?"

"Yes," said Ran. "I noticed it when I met him this morning ... it's the eyes, I think. He has blue eyes, too, and they're the same shape as yours. Are you related?"

Conan shifted, turning his face away from her and shrugging up his shoulders. "I don't know," he said. "I don't think so. Ran-neechan, I thought you said you didn't remember faces."

"I don't. Not for long periods of time, anyway, but I just saw him an hour ago. I haven't had _time_ to forget."

"Oh," said Conan vaguely. "Ne, Ran-neechan, did you notice about 'the Peer'?"

"Notice what?" asked Ran.

"About the name," Conan explained. "I think it might be another link ... _peer_ is what the English call their titled nobility, isn't it? And a _baron_ is an English noble."

"Oh," said Ran, and sat up quickly. "But that's _our_ case!"

"Yes," said Conan, "but our case is all tangled up with the Tani case, so it's possible – "

" – That they're investigating along the same lines as we are?" said Ran.

Conan nodded.

"I see ... but isn't that a little far-fetched?"

"By itself, yes," said Conan, "but our theory about the people who killed Shinichi-niichan matches up with Kazuha-neechan's information. Also, the fact that most of the people she mentioned as being involved in the case were policemen, taken with the fact that it's not an official investigation by the police could mean that they think there's someone – or several someones – in the Keishicho who are also connected with the criminals."

He paused, and Ran stared at him, brows furrowed. "But," she said, "the Baron ... Conan-kun, if Dr. Gosho was called in because they had something to hide – what if he was bribed?"

"With a hospice, you mean?"

"Yes," said Ran,

"I wonder," said Conan, and turned his pale face to stare at the wall over Ran's head. "It's not impossible, but we don't even know if we're right in supposing that Dr. Gosho _was_ brought in to convince the Kudous of something. And I find it hard to believe that all those detectives wouldn't have figured it out, _if_ the Peer is the Baron, and _if_ he bribed Dr. Gosho, and _if_ there was something going on that he needed to be bribed about. That's a lot of 'ifs', and no solid evidence for any of it. We could be completely wrong. Or we could be right about one thing and wrong about all the rest."

"I see," said Ran. "It's always that, isn't it? Not enough evidence, or no evidence at all..." She shivered.

"Ran-neechan," said Conan, after a moment, "what work was your mother involved in when she died."

"I think – she had been consulted about something to do with a company that manufactured guns," said Ran, slowly. "I remember she asked otousan to help right from the start, and I _think _it had to do with embezzlement – or there was something strange going on with the actual manufacturing. I can't remember that. Why do you want to know, Conan-kun?"

"I want to see if I can find some sort of connection," said Conan. "Does your father have any kind of record of the investigation?"

Ran nodded. "Yes, he's still got all his notes on it. I can make copies of them and bring them over tomorrow."

"Thanks," said Conan.

In the few minutes while they were talking, the little light that made its way past the black curtains, across the bare rooms, and into the hall had faded away, so that the hallway was a long collection of shadows, black on black, and Conan's face was only a pale blur in the darkness. In the absence of their voices, it was almost completely silent. Ran could hear the low growl of a car on some other street, and her own breathing, and, very faintly, the sound of a bird twittering to itself outside.

"Ran-neechan," said Conan, "can you get back home all right in the dark?"

"Yes," said Ran, and got to her feet with unnecessary clattering of her shoes. "There's streetlights, and I always carry a flashlight in my coat pocket, anyway."

"Oh?"

"Habit, I suppose." Ran glanced down at Conan, frowning; he had got to his feet, and the round grey smudge that was his face was turned towards her. "I was afraid of the dark when I was younger," she added, and then, "Do you live far from here? I should probably walk you back – your parents will be worried, won't they?"

"No," said Conan. "I'm staying at Agasa-hakase's house for the night." He paused, and Ran turned to leave. "Ano ... Ran-neechan..."

Ran paused with her hand on the doorknob. "Yes?"

The boy was silent for a moment; then he said, slowly, "Have you noticed anyone ... anyone following you lately, Ran-neechan?"

"Following?" repeated Ran, staring. "No, I haven't. Why?"

"Well, I thought" – the boy's tone was on the edge of nervousness and something else Ran couldn't identify – "I thought that you should be careful and – and tell me if you see anyone you think is following you around."

"Why would anyone follow me?"

"Because you're over here so much, Ran-neechan."

Ran's gloved hand slipped off the doorknob, and she turned completely to face Conan. "Well, so are you."

"Yes," said Conan, "but I'm not a detective's daughter. Anyway," he added hastily, "I just thought I should tell you to be careful. Watch out for the ones with black hats."

Ran disguised a laugh as a cough. "I'll be careful. Goodnight, Conan-kun."

"Goodnight, Ran-neechan."

The door closed behind Ran as she got down the steps, and when she looked back from the gate, she could still just barely make out Conan's small figure standing on the doorstep; she waved at him, then opened the gate and went out, closing it carefully behind her.

* * *

Ran went into her father's office first, once she had seen the dark windows of the apartment from the street. The door was unlocked; she frowned half-heartedly at it as she stepped in, and then hesitated for a moment before she switched on the light and locked it behind her.

In the room there were two metal filing cabinets with three drawers each, four small bookcases filled with an untidy mess of paper-filled folders, encyclopedias, and dusty books; a small table with an ancient laptop on it and a tangle of wires leading to a printer and a scanner on the floor next to it stood in one corner, and a bulky, dusty copying machine was on the floor in another. Mouri Kogoro's desk stood in front of the window, its surface covered with papers, ashtrays, and coffee mugs; between the door and the next there was a neat arrangement of two couches and a coffee-table. The coffee-table's clean, glassy surface contrasted oddly with the piles of papers and beer cans stacked haphazardly on top of everything else.

The drawers in the desk had paper labels fixed to them; all but one had two dates scrawled on them. Ran crossed the room without haste, dropping her coat on the floor by her father's chair, and pulled open the drawer with the blank label.

There was only one thing in the drawer: an old, much-handled folder. It was ragged around the edges, stained with irregular brownish blotches and a coffee-colored ring; it had been torn clean through horizontally near the middle, and the clean tear had been mended with Scotch tape, which was yellow and cracked in several areas. Near the top were the words "Sen-Gun" in fading ink, and to one side of the bold scrawl, in neat, precise handwriting: "That's not how you write it, dear." The horizontal tear had gone right through the word _dear_.

For the most part the papers inside were type-written pages; a few were blurred around the edges, marking them as copies; and there were a few sheets of lined paper covered mostly in her father's handwriting, a folded letter without its envelope, and a couple of diagrams. Over half of them had been torn and patched like the folder, and they were yellowed with age.

Ran carried them over to the copying machine in the folder and carefully began to feed them into the machine, laying the originals in one neat pile and her copies in another. Snatches of sentences from the lines of writing leapt out at her as she did:

_...Suspect that the corruption which I had hoped would not... _On wrinkled notepaper, a blur and a circle of ink and _says he's being blackmailed about or by a girl but why anyone_ in her father's handwriting; long columns of numbers; a blurry black-and-white photocopy of a photograph of a man with a conservative haircut hunched over a glass at a bar, stapled sloppily to another photocopy, this time of a page covered in careful typewritten font – the words _previously convicted of multiple..._ Another page full of notes in her father's sloppy handwriting, and in the lower corner, neatly: _He's lying._

And at the top of the page fourth from last, in clear, bold lettering: _Transcript of inquest held on the body of Kudou Shinichi..._

The apartment was dark and cold when Ran unlocked the door with her free hand; the other clutched the papers she'd copied in her father's office. She closed and locked the door behind her before fumbling her way to the light-switch and moving it to the "on" position. By its light she saw that the living room was as neat as she had left it, and when she flipped the switch in the kitchen she saw that the note she'd left her father was still lying on the table beside the plastic-covered plate of food she had set out for him.

She had not eaten before she left, but her stomach clenched uncomfortably at the sight of the food and she turned away to hang her coat neatly in its place on the empty coat-rack, then tucked the sheaf of papers under her arm so she could pull off her gloves and replace them in the pockets.

Ran felt the doorknob automatically, and when it refused to turn under her hand she crossed the room to the hall and her bedroom, flicking both light-switches up as she passed them. She shut the door of her bedroom behind her, too, and then knelt by her desk and pulled open her bottom drawer. It was filled with notebooks and loose paper; she lifted them out and placed the papers she'd copied face-down at the bottom of the drawer before replacing the other items.

Then she stood by her desk for a long moment, her face turned to the clock on the wall, eyes following the ticking second hand.

The lap-drawer of her desk stuck when she first tried to pull it out, but yielded when she yanked at it for the second time, sliding open to display a medley of pencils, letters postmarked from America, loose trinkets, old grocery lists, a wrist-watch showing the time as 7.18 PM, stamps, pens, and coupons. Ran bushed them all aside impatiently, and her stiff fingers swept along the back of the drawer until they found and closed upon the cold metal of a picture-frame, which she pulled out, angling it away from the light fixture in the ceiling above so that the light stuck it only indirectly.

Eyes fixed on the face in the plain metal frame, Ran backed away from the desk and curled up on top of her bedcovers, her head resting on the pillow, her hands cupped protectively around the picture.

Mouri Eri smiled up at her from behind the clear glass. The woman's glasses had been pushed down to the end of her nose, and her eyes were narrowed against the light that glared against the glasses; her thin lips were quirked into an amused smile. Her brown hair had been pulled back in a loose bun, except for her neat bangs, but a few tendrils had escaped and hung down across her cheeks and neck. Her shoulders were twisted away from the camera; she was looking up and over, and laughing...

"Ran! Ran! Oi, Ran!"

Ran opened her eyes and sat up at almost the same instant that the door burst open and her father stumbled into the room, catching himself up against the desk to stare at her and pant. Over his head, the clock ticked quietly, the hour and minute hands showing 10.24.

Ran's fingers closed around the picture-frame lying on the wrinkled covers, and she shoved it under her pillow without looking it. "What is it, otousan?"

Mouri glanced around the room quickly, almost nervously, his eyes narrowed. "Er ... Ran, did you come home straight from school?"

"Yes," said Ran, mystified and.

"Did you leave the apartment after you came home?"

Ran nodded. "I went out around six o'clock. Why?"

"What time did you get back?"

"Seven," said Ran. "What's the matter, otousan?"

The detective straightened and put his hands in his pockets, muttering under his breath for a moment and then finally saying, "Just wanted to know. Er ... you didn't hear anything after you got home, did you? Someone walking in the hall?"

"No," said Ran. "I went to sleep."

"Ah," said Mouri, glancing around again. "That's ... then... You should, er, take your shoes off and get dressed for bed before you go to sleep again, Ran. Goodnight."

He turned his head, looking around the room once again, and then went out and shut the door firmly behind him. Ran heard his heavy footsteps going all around the apartment, pausing occasionally: down the hall into his room, back up it into the kitchen and living-room; she heard the sound of drawers being pulled out and of chairs being shoved across the floor.

She returned her mother's picture to its place in the back of her drawer before she took her father's advice and went back to sleep.

_To Be Continued..._

**

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****A/N**: Well, this chapter is proof that the number "six" is evil incarnate. It was jinxed or something, I swear. I spent over half a month dithering over the first two pages, and it only really got going after I went and took out about four paragraphs of Ran being melodramatic. (You'll have to decide for yourself whether four was enough. ¬.¬)

Then I wasn't comfortable with it when I was nearly finished until I went back and added a few unnecessary details just to make a few things line up perfectly. Mouri-san wasn't supposed to come home at that point in time... I had also planned on writing about Ran crying, but I really can't stand writing emotional scenes ... so I cheated and you get two blank bits, which you can speculate about if you like. Anyway, the result is that this chapter is one that is definitely going to get a huge makeover when I start going back and editing things.

Thanks for the reviews!

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**Japanese glossary for this chapter:**

**-hakase:** professor

**-kun:** a (generally) masculine suffix indicating friendship or familiarity.

**Keishicho:** the Tokyo police force. Also known as the "Metropolitan Police Department".

**neechan:** big sister; a suffix or nickname.

**niichan:** big brother; a suffix or nickname.

**otousan:** father

**Sen-Gun**: "sen" is "a thousand", and "gun" is English. (Stupid name for a company, but the best I could come up with on short notice. Incidentally, it's "Metal, Ltd." in all my notes, which is at least marginally more stupid.)

**Tani**: a Japanese surname meaning "valley".

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**Review replies:**

**Reader**: Thanks for the review! n.n Of course I can't say anything about Conan, since that would be telling... Anyway, the next chapter should be out sooner than this one was. (Knock on wood or pray to the saints, according to preference.) Thanks again for reviewing!


	7. Chapter 7

I bet you can guess what goes here. Hint: it starts with a D, ends with an R, and has ISCLAIME somewhere in the middle. Oh, and it's a word in a modern language meaning that I don't own anything I write about.

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**Chapter Seven**

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The next morning Ran arrived at the school gates over fifteen minutes early. To make up for it she dawdled in the halls, so it was almost ten minutes later when she came around a corner and nearly walked into Hattori and Kazuha, who were standing together outside their homeroom. The detective straightened to offer her a polite greeting and then went back to leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets; Kazuha looked up from the bright yarn she was plaiting and smiled.

"Ohayou, Ran-chan!"

"Ohayou," said Ran, slinging her book bag over one shoulder. "What are you doing, Kazuha-chan?"

"Braiding a ribbon," explained Kazuha. "My hair-tie snapped on the way here, and I'd forgotten to bring a spare, but I had this yarn in my pocket. It used to be a bracelet."

"It was a hideous bracelet," said Hattori.

Kazuha's cheeks dimpled. "Hakuba-kun and Kuroba-kun were supposed to meet Heiji here early to talk about something."

"They should have been here fifteen minutes ago," grumbled Hattori.

"I'm sure – " began Kazuha, in a placating tone, but Hattori interrupted her. He straightened again and said, "_There_ you are! What kept you?"

Ran turned and found herself looking up at Kuroba Kaito, who was smiling vaguely; over his shoulder she could see Hakuba, looking flushed and indignant.

Kuroba said, "We were unavoidably delayed – by a truck-driver, of all things. I think he must have misread 'pedestrian crossing' as 'pedestrian squashing', because he made a tolerable effort to squelch Hakuba here. I imagine the doctors will probably find something wrong with his eyes at the inquest."

"Inquest?" said Hattori and Kazuha together.

"He missed Hakuba by a mile, more or less," said Kuroba, "but he managed to hit one of those dinky little designer outlets, which was commendable of him, and explode his engine, which was not so commendable, in the opinion of the police, at least. When we left they were still trying to reassemble him and one of the medics had fainted. And Hakuba thinks – "

" – that there ought to be more traffic wardens in Tokyo," finished Hakuba, straightening his tie with a jerk. "Accidents like these are the result of inadequate traffic direction. Ohayou gozaimasu, Tomoya-chan, Mouri-chan."

But as Ran echoed his greeting she saw Hattori's eyes narrow thoughtfully, and when Sonoko arrived, chattering happily about a new movie she'd seen the night before, Ran saw the fair-haired detective pass Hattori a neat square of folded paper. And after the last class, the three boys retreated to stand in a loose triangle by a window and speak in low tones: Hattori had good-natured worry written on his face and in the quick movements of his hands; Hakuba's shoulders were squared determinedly, though his face was still shadowed with something like apprehension; Kuroba's back was to her, but his hands were in his pockets and he seemed to listen more than he spoke.

Ran was still watching them when Sonoko settled herself on the edge of her desk and followed her friend's eyes to the three boys. "You certainly stare at those two a lot, Ran," she observed. "Which one is it?"

For a moment Ran stared at Sonoko blankly; then she flushed and said, "I do not!" indignantly.

"Is it Kuroba-kun?" inquired Sonoko obliviously. "He's quite good-looking, even though he looks half asleep all the time. – "

"Kuroba-kun's got a girl already," interjected Kazuha. "Nakamori Aoko – her father's in the Kaitou 1412 taskforce. I think that's how he and Hakuba-kun met Heiji. Hakuba-kun chases after Kaitou Kid a lot."

"Then it'll have to be Hakuba-kun," said Sonoko approvingly. "He's certainly got style. That hair – "

"Oh, for goodness' sakes!" said Ran. "Really, Sonoko, you need to get a boy of your own before you start match-making at me."

Sonoko grinned and said nothing, but the smug look she gave Ran out of the corners of her eyes spoke for her.

"_Sonoko_! You never said a word! Who is he?"

"Kyougoku Makoto," said Sonoko, still smug, "from the karate club. He took me to the movie last night. He – well, you know Ishii-sensei?"

"The geography teacher?" said Kazuha. "What was he up to?"

"Nothing, I suppose," said Sonoko, twisting her mouth into a frown, "but he's so – "

"Smarmy," supplied Ran.

" – 'Insinuating' was what I was going to say, but that works too – and you know how he corners one and talks and talks and talks – "

"I see," said Ran, grinning. "Kyougoku-san rescued you from the dragon, is that it?"

"Nothing so dramatic," said Sonoko, blushing. "But he stopped and began to talk, too, and Ishii-sensei had to go away after a while, and then we just kept on talking, and – " with a return to her previously complacency, "he asked me out. And he's a nice boy. I like him."

Ran said, "You _do_ know this gives us license to tease _you_, don't you?"

"Does not," retorted Sonoko. "You're _both_ too nice to do any such thing. Why else would I pick you in particular to tease?"

"Minx," said Ran, without rancor, and Kazuha gave a tiny helpless groan.

"I am, aren't I?" said Sonoko, looking pleased. "But it's for your own good, you know. If I tease you a lot, then maybe you'll start feeling harassed enough to get a move on. _So_, Ran, about Hakuba-kun..."

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Half an hour later Ran was pushing open the back door of the Kudou house. This time she didn't have to call: Conan appeared in the doorway of the little back room before she had finished shutting the door behind her, and stood quietly while Ran pulled off her shoes and set them neatly into the corner under the coat-rack.

Then: "Ran-neechan, you got those papers very fast!"

"I thought I should," said Ran. "I pushed them under the door this morning – it was locked, or I would have put them on the table for you. Have you read them already?"

Conan brightened. "I have."

"All of them?"

"Well, _almost _all of them, Ran-neechan," said Conan, and the bright look sharpened. "I didn't look at the numbers, but I think they're from someone's bank account. Ano ... you didn't expect to find Shinichi-niichan's inquest there, did you?"

"No," said Ran, "I didn't. Otousan never – he never told me anything."

"I was surprised, too," said Conan, cheerfully. "What did you make of it?"

"I didn't look at them," said Ran; and Conan, already turning away into the hall, paused and looked back over his shoulder. It was an odd look: a knowing look, incurious, a little embarrassed, and almost pitying in its solemnity; but it vanished almost instantly and was replaced with bland cheerfulness. "That's okay. I can summarize it for you, Ran-neechan."

He vanished back into the hall, but Ran stood and stared after him until she heard the metallic rattle of a doorknob and the sound of a chair being pulled across the wooden floor.

The boy was already crouching in his seat when she came in, and the papers she'd brought him were spread over the table in neat stacks. Closest to him were four pages full of neat, impersonal writing, with grey blurs around the edges.

He waited silently while Ran seated herself in the chair to his left, and then said, "Where should I start?"

"Begin at the beginning," suggested Ran, "and go on until you reach the end, and then stop."

"Yes," said Conan, grinning, "but do you mean the beginning chronologically, or in the order that it's written here, or in order of importance?"

"In the order that it's written."

"All right. Then the beginning is the date. It's March thirteenth, which confirms the date mentioned in the newspapers. The second thing is the location; the building they held it in is old and used to be part of the police headquarters until they relocated years and years ago. Last I heard, it still belonged to the Keishicho, but wasn't in regular use and was actually being rented out as a church."

"Is that more evidence for someone wanting the whole thing hushed up?" asked Ran.

"Actually," said Conan, "cars are more likely to be noticed when they're parked somewhere they aren't usually parked. It could be evidence for someone not wanting the _police_ to know any more about it than could be helped, though, since it's miles away from the nearest station."

Ran frowned. "Does that mean that all the people there were corrupt?"

"I don't know," said Conan. "It wasn't held _in camera_, officially, but the only people there were the jurors, the coroner, the other necessary officials, and the witnesses, so it was _in camera_ in the practical sense of the phrase. They could have all been bribed, I suppose."

"What about the jurors?"

"I'll get to the jurors at the very last. The next thing is the identification of the body. The next-of-kin usually identifies it, but the Kudous weren't there. Instead they had a statement signed by both of them, saying that 'the deceased' was their son Shinichi."

"They'd already left the country?" asked Ran, startled.

"I can't find a date for their departure," said Conan. "Agasa-hakase thinks they left right away, but the note they left him said they'd be taking Shinichi-niichan's body with them, and you can't remove the body until after the inquest. They might need it. Of course," he added, wryly, "if this was a detective story, it would mean that Shinichi-niichan hadn't really been killed and that it was someone else's body. Only the face wasn't mutilated and they gave a statement all right, so there's no chance of that. Still..."

"Are they even allowed to do that?" asked Ran. "I didn't know they could bring statements instead of witnesses."

"I didn't, either," said Conan. "It's odd, because you'd think that they'd want to avoid looking odd. But then it also seems that they didn't want to have the Kudous there ... they should have been able to come up with something better than a statement – and they didn't even give any explanation for why the next-of-kin wasn't even _there_. That's very poor planning."

"It is possible that they weren't careful because they thought no one would be interested in it?"

Conan considered this, frowning intently. "It is _possible_, but you don't get to be powerful enough to manipulate the Keishicho by forgetting to tie up loose ends."

"No," said Ran, "I suppose you don't. But then I don't see how – well, never mind. What's next?"

"The operator who took Shinichi-niichan's call. She confirms what we read in the newspapers - that Shinichi-niichan called and said that someone was trying to break in."

"Is that all?"

Conan's blue eyes flickered away from the papers, fastening momentarily on Ran's face, and then settling on the window across the room. "More or less. Shinichi-niichan said 'Hello, neechan. Someone's trying to break into my house' and gave the address. She was starting to tell him to stay calm and keep talking to her when he said 'Thanks, neechan' and hung up. That's all."

"Oh," said Ran.

"The next witnesses are the policemen. They haven't got much to say; just that when they pulled up, Kudou Yuusaku-san had also just arrived in his car."

"How – " began Ran.

"Apparently he'd been at a police station and someone told him about the call. Shinichi-niichan's father unlocked the door for them and they went in – the library's the second room from the front door so they found him almost at once, even though the lights had all been turned off." The boy paused for a moment, tilted his head to one side, and continued in a sing-song voice: "'Deceased was lying on his back on the floor, with his head towards the door and his feet near the desk. He was not lying flat. One of his arms was under him and his head was turned to the right, and his legs were angled away from him. There was a pool of blood around him. I did not get a good look at him because Kudou ran to him and lifted him up to check for breathing and pulse.'"

Another pause, and then, more naturally: "Anyway, Shinichi-niichan didn't have a pulse and he wasn't breathing, so one of the policemen called for an ambulance while Kudou-san and the other policeman were performing CPR. He started breathing again before the ambulance arrived– "

"The newspapers made it sound like he was gone when the police got there," said Ran.

"Well," said Conan, "technically he was. But they got their times wrong, you know. They said 'the police' arrived at 7.58, but that was when Megure-keibu got there. The policemen who answered his call arrived a little before 7.30. The ambulance arrived around 7.45 and took Shinichi-niichan to the hospital, but he never regained consciousness and died a few hours later. That's skipping ahead a little – "

Ran straightened with a jerk. "The newspapers never said anything about that, either!"

"They never said anything about a lot of things. For instance – the newspaper left out the evidence of the two emergency medical technicians who testified about the condition of Shinichi-niichan's wounds and the– "

"_Wounds_? In the _plural_?"

"Yes," said Conan. "The bullet-wound we already know about, of course – it was in his left shoulder. It nicked the collarbone but went right through, and they found the bullet all right – Megure-keibu did. And he'd been hit in the head twice. "

"Where?"

"Forehead and back of the head," said Conan, briefly. "Doctor Gosho's evidence was that Shinichi-niichan was probably hit in the forehead and thrown back against the desk by the blow. His comes later, after Megure-keibu's, but if you'd rather hear his first– "

"Yes, please," said Ran, politely.

"Both were concussions, then, but he said that the one in the front was more serious and was what actually caused the death. It doesn't sound very awful from his description; the skin wasn't even broken. He says that whatever hit him was fairly small. One of the jurors asked if the concussion could have been caused by a handgun and he said that yes, he thought it could, if one struck out hard enough. He said, too, that the loss of blood might have killed him if the concussion hadn't."

"But," said Ran, "but– "

"Why hit him when they'd already shot him, you mean?" asked Conan; Ran nodded mutely. "I don't know. It doesn't seem likely that they hit him first and shot him afterwards. Megure-keibu did say that from the marks on the floor they thought that he fell back against the desk when he was shot, and then got up again. Maybe they hit him then." He hesitated for a moment, then went on: "All the witnesses agreed that the room was disordered: Shinichi-niichan's backpack had been pulled open and the contents dumped out, and – and apparently they'd gone through his pockets, too, looking for something. They found pens and a little notebook and his magnifying glass and some rubber bands and rocks scattered around the room with the backpack and his homework, and his school I.D. near the door."

"Oh," said Ran.

The boy glanced sideways at her; his mouth was pinched in a thin, anxious line. "That's another thing that makes your idea that he had something incriminating more likely."

"Yes," said Ran, dully. "They're not very clever, are they?"

"What makes you say that?"

"Well – neither of those wounds could have looked like _mortal_ wounds, and – even if he'd stopped breathing, you know emergency medical aid has gotten so much better in the past few decades – you'd think they'd take the trouble to be absolutely sure that he was silenced after they'd betrayed themselves like that. It's just..."

She trailed off, and Conan said, reasonably and a little blankly, "Perhaps that's why they shot him _and_ bashed his head in, then. But probably the police got there before they had time to do everything they needed to. From the neighbor's evidence we know that at the most they had fewer than twenty minutes to do everything, including the shooting. After that they had more like five to ten minutes, and that's not a lot of time in which to come up with an idea to make it look like a burglary as well as doing all the footwork. Actually, you know," he added, "if Shinichi-niichan didn't die at once, they probably meant to get him to tell them where whatever-it-was was, but Doctor Gosho said the concussion probably knocked him out, so they might have been waiting in case he woke up. And they wouldn't want to shoot him while the police were pulling into the driveway. Or maybe they just didn't think about the fact that he could have been revived. They were lucky that he died even after he _was _revived."

Ran shuddered. "Don't talk like that."

"Sorry," said Conan, and dropped his gaze to the papers. "That's about all Megure-keibu and Doctor Gosho have to say."

"Then – all that does is give us a clearer idea of what happened and shore up the idea that they were looking for something."

"Not quite."

"What do you mean?"

"It's the list of things they found in the room. There's no lunchbox."

"Lunchbox?"

"Shinichi-niichan went straight to Kuroba-san's house after school that day, so he should have had it with him."

"Oh," said Ran, blankly; and then: "_Oh_! The one Agasa-hakase made him – of course! He showed it to me; there was enough room inside for a bento-box, too, so of course he could have ... but, Conan-kun, if it was gone, doesn't that mean they got the evidence?"

"It means they _thought_ they had the evidence, but cameras aren't much good after dark, you know, and they did come back later."

"You mean 'somebody' came back later," said Ran. "We don't know it was them."

"Of course not, but there's no reason to think that anyone else would want to come poking around."

"No reason that we _know_ of. We haven't tried any other lines of investigation."

"That," said Conan, his tone half amused and half exasperated, "is probably because there _aren't_ any other lines of investigation."

"We haven't tried to pin the guilt on the least obvious person," said Ran, with determined solemnity. "It's highly irregular; we haven't investigated the policemen or suspected Agasa-hakase of a homicidal mania or – don't laugh, Conan-kun, this is really – oh, bother!"

But when they had stopped laughing, Conan looked up at Ran gravely and said:

"Of course you're right. We haven't really got any proof for anything – we haven't got so much as circumstantial evidence that points definitely at something. We've only got logical arguments based on extremely iffy premises – most of them wouldn't hang a dog. But I really don't think there can be any other explanation other than the one we've got, even if it has got so many holes in it. We could say that it was a simple burglary gone wrong – except that it doesn't look like a burglary; it looks like it's trying to look like a burglary. It could be revenge on Kudou-san, like you suggested – except that, of the people I know of who wanted revenge, most have alibis, and the ones that don't aren't the sort who would take vengeance by killing a kid."

Ran looked inquiring, and he said, "I asked Agasa-hakase to look it up. But what I meant was – well, we don't even have proof that the two men the witness saw going into the house were the ones who killing Shinichi-niichan. It's just circumstantial evidence to say that they're the only people we know who were in the house when he was shot, and that therefore they must have been the ones who shot him. The rest of our ideas are just as circumstantial." He glanced down at the neat pages of the inquest, and added, "Somehow I thought this would help."

"Hasn't it?"

"Not really ... I hadn't finished, but all that's left is Kuroba-san's evidence and Inoue-san's – that's the neighbor – and theirs were in the newspapers, mostly. Inoue-san's was repeated almost verbatim, and the gist of Kuroba-san's you've already heard. And that's all."

"Are you sure?"

Conan's eyebrows lowered, giving him a faintly irritated look. "Of course I'm sure. That's where it ends. Anyway, it could only tell us what other people know about what happened. So all we know for sure is that Shinichi-niichan left Kuroba-san's house around six, got home between 7.15 and 7.20, was shot by persons unknown between 7.20 and 7.30, during which time the same persons also went through his pockets and his backpack, and stole his lunchbox and three valuable first-edition mystery novels, and left before the police arrived on the scene. That's all we _know_. Everything else is conjecture. And we knew almost all of that already."

"Are you saying we've gained nothing from having the inquest?"

"Nearly nothing," said Conan, wearily, "but maybe we'll find something in the other papers."

Ran glanced down at the table, frowned at the black-and-white photograph, and then stood up. "I should be going now. You too, Conan-kun, or your parents will – oh, weren't you going to tell me something about the jurors?"

The boy looked up at her, and for a moment the blue eyes behind the thick glasses were blank. Then: "Oh," said Conan. "That."

_To Be Continued ..._

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**A/N**: So here I am, behind schedule again, but at least not as behind as last time. Hooray!

This chapter was typed up rapidly, and edited quite a lot as it was typed, so I won't be surprised if most of the reviews begin with 'Excuse me, but have you noticed that in paragraph twenty-four you contradict yourself exactly fourteen times...?' and go on to say a great deal more about a great many more contradictions. Anyway, chapter seven will definitely need to be worked over when I start going through and correcting things and editing stuff. Be dears and tell me if I've made any really frightful blunders, please.

Thanks for all the reviews!

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**Review replies:**

**Sunny**: Thanks for the review. I'm glad you like the story!


	8. Chapter 8

I actually own _Detective Conan_. Yes, I do. Don't look at me like that. I'm actually Gosho Aoyama, and I've been lying about how old I am and what my sex is and where I live and what languages I speak and how many brothers and sisters I have. I thought of another way I could write the story and so I am. Hey, what are you doing with that straightjacket? Wait! Stop! I can explain—

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**Chapter Eight**

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_Nakano Hiroshi, coroner, brother-in-law of Shimizu Sen, (?) Superintendent Supervisor in the Kyoto police. – Moved to Kyoto four years ago. (Age 56.) **He retired the same year he moved.**_

_Fujiwara Makoto, foreman, nephew of Fujiwara Osamu of Tokyo's Criminal Investiation Bureau. – He was a Police Superintendent. **Fujiwara Osamu was also a third cousin of **__**Yamazaki Naoki and a good friend of Megure.**_

_Katou Emi, juror, niece of Miura Yutaka, in the forensic science branch of Tokyo's Criminal Investigation Bureau. **Her brother, Katou Daiki, is a policeman.** _

_Sasaki Takuya, juror. (?) Younger brother of Sasaki Manabu, Senior Policeman. **Retired.** _

_Yamazaki Mai, juror, granddaughter of Yamazaki Naoki (?) Police Sergeant in Meguro district's Traffic Bureau. _

_Ikeda Shouta, juror. Cousin of Nakagawa Daisuke, part of the Kaitou 1412 Taskforce. _– _Ikeda died in a plane crash on his way home from a vacation in __France the next year**. Nakagawa died in a car accident five years ago.**_

_Aoki Testsuya, juror, grandfather of Aoki Kenta, Police Inspector. – Retired to Hokkaido. _

It was a worn, ragged-edged piece of paper that Ran tucked into her pocket as she turned into the lane perpendicular to the street the Kudou house fronted, despite the fact that it had been only a week since she had written down the coroner's and the jurors' names at Conan's dictation. She had, at the same time, taken down the names of six others: Shimizu Sen, Fujiwara Osamu, Miura Yutaka, Nakagawa Daisuke, Yamazaki Naoki, and Aoki Kenta.

Ran had taken the paper home with her and utilised her father's battered old laptop after school the next day, and had found it remarkably easy to discover that Sasaki Takuya had a younger brother who was in the police force, as well as confirming that Yamazaki Naoki and Shimizu Sen were also police officers. She'd slid the amended paper under the door the next morning on her way to school, and on her return, later that day, found that Conan had folded it into a plane and (from the dirty, battered look of it) used it to reenact a number of particularly violent plane crashes. He had also added a few notes in awkward, childish handwriting, and had explained that "Agasa-hakase said..."

Over the next few day, it had been unfolded and refolded again and again while they pored over their papers, and once, in a brief but violent fit of irritation, Ran had crumpled it into a ball and thrown it across the room. She had laughed at herself for her frustration the next moment, and gone to pick it up; when she turned around she had glimpsed an unhappy, pinched look on Conan's face: an almost bitter look, but it vanished so quickly that she might have imagined it.

(Still, he had been oddly withdrawn that day, and in the end she had suggested that they go over the house again. She had hoped that it would stir him out of his torpor, and it had – for as long as they were searching. But the search had proved more disappointing than the first, and the next day she had entered the house in the midst of a dead silence, and Conan had been as silent that day as the day before.)

And only that morning she'd been looking at the paper again as she turned onto the pavement from her house, and she'd walked straight into a burly, broad-faced man and dropped it into the gutter. Fortunately it had been dry and empty, but still, Ran thought, unlatching the gate into the Kudous' backyard, a new copy was definitely in order.

There had been a short, violent rainstorm later in the morning, and the yard was a sodden, muddy mess. Ran picked her way through the mud-puddles carefully, but when she reached the back door her shoes were inch-deep in thick brown mud. There was no doormat, so she took her shoes off outside, stepping onto the clean doorstep and placing her shoes neatly on the ground beside it.

After the cold wind outside, the still, musty coldness inside the house was a relief, and Ran let out a breath that was almost a sigh as she closed the door behind her. She leaned against it for a moment, listening to the sound of her breathing, the only noise in the silent house.

Abruptly she pushed away from the door and walked across the hall, scuffing her sock-feet against the clean floor and turning the handle of the door into the breakfast room jerkily, so that it clattered loudly as it opened.

Conan was standing by the window when she came in, his hands in his pockets and his face turned away so that only the pale curve of one cheek was visible against the black curtains. He turned toward her as she paused in the doorway; his round face lit up for a moment and then subsided into vague welcome. "Hello, Ran-neechan."

"Hello, Conan-kun," said Ran, with her eyes fixed on the boy's unreadable face. "Nice weather, isn't it?"

"H'm," said Conan, absently, and turned back to the window. "Did you find out anything new, Ran-neechan?"

Bother! thought Ran; but when she spoke, her voice was cheerful. "Aside from the fact that Katou Emi was a hair-dresser and has moved to Hokkaido since the inquest, I'm afraid not. We can go over it again, I suppose. Perhaps this time – "

Conan swung around to face her again. "I don't think we'll find anything new," he said. "Do you, Ran-neechan?"

"No," said Ran. "Not really."

He was looking directly at her seriously and a little thoughtfully, and Ran looked away from him, down at the floor by the table. A couple of papers were scattered on the floor near one of the legs; she picked them up without looking at them, placed them on an empty space on the tabletop, and seated herself in a chair with the window to her left.

"Are you afraid?"

Ran flinched, and her eyes flew up. Conan had moved noiselessly across the room while she had been seating herself, and now stood on the other side of the table with his blue eyes fixed pensively on her face. She stiffened defensively, then dropped her gaze and said in a small voice:

"I don't know."

Conan said nothing.

"It doesn't _feel_ like fear, it's just that – I'm being silly. I know my mother is dead, but I never knew why. I don't know why. And it didn't feel as – as _close_ when I knew nothing, and even when all I knew was that otousan didn't think her death was an accident."

Silence.

Ran said defiantly, "I _am_ afraid. I'm terrified that if we look through those papers we'll find out that she and Shinichi both died for some petty, stupid reason. That would be the worst – "

She broke off, clamping her mouth shut and giving a tiny shiver, and after a moment Conan slid into his chair and said, "Well, I wanted to look back over some thing anyway."

"Which ones?" said Ran.

"Oh – the evidence of the policemen." Conan gestured vaguely toward one of the four pages laid neatly before his seat. "They didn't see anyone leaving the house as they arrived – which could be against the idea that the murderers only left at the last minute – except that the policemen went straight in the front door, and _they_ came in through a window, so they probably left the same way."

"Which window was it?"

"Um ... that one, I think." Conan jerked a thumb towards the window he had been standing by, and then continued, absently, "Of course Megure-keibu checked the back door and the window and the ground around the window for fingerprints and footprints, but he didn't find anything definite – and the window is close to the ground, which makes it less likely that they'd leave a deep imprint. He didn't find anything when he checked walls, either – just a couple of smudges on one bit where he thought they might have come over."

"No footprints?"

Conan shook his head. "Nothing. It'd been dry weather and the ground was hard. And they came out into the alley – "

" – which is paved. I see," said Ran, glumly.

Conan's mouth twisted into a wry smile that was almost a grimace. "They're smarter than they look at first, aren't they?"

"Yes," said Ran, frowning. "It's odd. It would have been smarter to kill him in a way that would be less likely to make people think of murder, but they whipped up a plan to make it look like a normal sort of accident and made sure that they didn't leave anything behind that might help identify them, so that even if anyone suspected that it _had_ been a murder, there'd be no way to prove it. But then – "

Conan finished the sentence for her. "Why all the cover-up? That's what I was thinking, too. They'd already done all they could to make it look unpremeditated, and if they'd been smart, they would have just left it at that – but instead they fall all over themselves trying to hush up the inquest – why? – and fill the jury-box with relatives of people in the police – why? – and break into the house again three times _and_ try to set it on fire. If they'd got up on a table and shouted 'Look at me!' they couldn't have made themselves any more obvious – "

" – and yet the police are oblivious," said Ran.

"Or more corrupt than is possible," said Conan.

"Or they're simply pretending they didn't notice," said Ran, "for some reason which probably would make perfect sense if we knew what it was."

Conan opened his mouth, shut it, and frowned.

"_Could_ that be it?" said Ran. "After all, someone did send a copy of the inquest to my father, and you did say that the two cases could be related. It's not a police matter, apparently, but there are policemen working on it. What if they're all deliberately ignoring it so that no one will suspect what they're working on and start staging more accidents?"

"I suppose that could be it," said Conan, slowly.

"It would explain why the police didn't do anything."

"But not why the murderers were so anxious about the inquest and so clumsy about covering it up."

"Well – perhaps they're not really as influential as we thought they were. Perhaps they bribed someone on the spur of the moment and were in such a rush that they tripped over their own feet, metaphorically speaking. The inquest _was_ held the very next day, after all."

"But," said Conan, "but it's so _stupid_! Why go to all the trouble of holding the inquest on the sly, and keeping it as much out of the newspapers as they could, and then rigging the jury – _don't_ tell me that it wasn't rigged, that _can't_ be a coincidence – rigging the jury so that the jurors are all relatives of _policemen_? And why didn't they suppress Inoue-san and the operator? Their evidence is what makes it look suspicious in the first place!"

"But wouldn't it be even more suspicious if anyone found out that two people who knew something about it had been deliberately left out?"

"I suppose so," said Conan. "But what about the jury, then?"

"Perhaps for something like the same reason they might have had Doctor Gosho perform the autopsy," suggested Ran. "Maybe they thought that the verdict would look better coming from people who probably knew something about the police courts."

Conan shrugged.

"Or maybe they thought that people related to policemen would be more likely to – no, that wouldn't work, they'd actually be far less likely to believe any half-baked story about the inquest – oh! Conan-kun, what if they told the jurors they'd been selected because they knew something about the Keishicho and could be trusted to keep their mouths shut? They'd naturally have been curious about the location and the seclusion, but maybe they were told that the police wanted the whole thing kept quiet for some reason – national security or something. They might believe that."

"Would you?"

Ran frowned. "It would depend on how they put it, I think. And it would be unlikely for me to spontaneously suspect a public official of having been bribed to cover something up. What do you think?"

"I don't know," said Conan.

"Well, we don't _know_ anything," said Ran. "What do you _think_?"

"I don't know!"

The words were spoken with a vehemence that made Ran look anxiously across at the boy. He had drawn his knees up to his chest, and his head was bowed, so that his eyes were hidden by his tangled bangs and thick glasses; but she could see his mouth, and it was set in a line which gave away nothing: obstinately, un-childishly unreadable.

She said lightly, "Then perhaps we'd better give it up as nursery-rhyme nonsense and go on to something else."

"It only looks like nonsense because we don't know what's going on," said Conan, irritably. "People are basically rational beings – they always do things for a reason. We're just – missing something..."

He stopped, frowning vaguely, and then went on: "Do you have any ideas about the certificate of death?"

Ran shook her head. "I don't. It beats _me_ why they couldn't get the doctor who signed the thing to be present at the inquest. I suppose he could have been very busy, or called away – or perhaps he died suddenly."

"No," said Conan, "because he moved to India a few years later."

"No proper proof of death and no proper proof of identity," said Ran, with a half-smile. "I take it that we'll presently begin to make assumptions bases on the premises that it wasn't Shinichi and he isn't dead."

"Uh huh," said Conan, unenthusiastically. "I suppose the Kudous smuggled him and his invisible twin brother out of Japan in a coffin."

"Wouldn't that be nice," said Ran; Conan looked up at her sharply and then shifted, dangling his legs over the edge of his chair and resting his hands in his lap.

"Let me think for a bit, Ran-neechan. Maybe I can come up with something."

"All right," said Ran; and, practically, pulled the list of jurors and a pen from her pocket, took a sheet of blank notebook paper from the pile on the table, and began to copy the ragged paper slowly and carefully.

_Nakano Hiroshi, coroner, aged 42 at the time of the inquest. Married to Nakano Kyoko, nee Shizumu Kyoko, younger sister of Shimizu Sen, Superintendent Supervisor in the Kyoto police. Retired age 52, now living in Kyoto with his wife._

Ran glanced up without moving her head. Conan had changed his position: he was leaning forward with one fisted hand to his face, his chin supported by the thumb; his blue eyes were staring blankly over her head. She looked back down.

_Fujiwara Makoto, foreman..._

She'd met Megure before; it had been when she was a child, of course, and since she had been back in Tokyo she had not seen him. Hadn't her father mentioned him, though? In connection with his case, maybe?

_Katou Emi, juror..._

As reticent as her father was about his work, she'd never heard of Miura Yutaka (_Criminal Investigation..._), or his niece Katou Emi, or his nephew Katou Daiki; Conan had known who the former were at once. How much, she wondered, was Conan involved in his father's work?

_Sasaki Takuya, juror..._

"And my teachers said – said I was smart for my age" ... He had not seemed elated by the praise, but perhaps he was used to it. Used to it ... Ran wondered if the black mood that had settled on him was there because he couldn't solve _this_ problem. She'd have to ask him, sometime, if he helped his father with his cases.

_Yamazaki Mai, juror..._

_Ikeda Shouta, juror..._

Conan had shifted his position again. He was leaning forward and his knees were doubled before him, so that he was sitting on his heels, balanced precariously on the edge of his chair. His face was turned downward toward a sheet of paper: it was one of the four which were the inquest of Kudou Shinichi.

_Aoki Tetsuya, juror..._

Ran set the pen down on the table and shivered again, then glanced across the table at her companion. He was still looking down at the same sheet of paper, his eyes flickering quickly over the faded lettering, eyebrows lowered and mouth curved down in a puzzled from.

"Conan-kun, what are you reading?"

The boy did not look up. "The things they found in the room with him," he said.

"Why?"

"There's something – " Conan gave a jerky little shrug and broke off, his frown deepening.

" 'Something'?"

Conan shook his head irritably and looked up, and Ran got out of her chair, leaning across the table and craning her neck until she could read the words on the paper. "School I.D., notebook –"

" – magnifying glass, rubber bands, rocks, backpack, homework, pens," finished Conan, impatiently, without looking down. "It's not that. Something is missing."

"The lunchbox," suggested Ran.

"No, not that. It's not the gun, either. Ran-neechan, do you remember if – there was anything that Shinichi-niichan always had with him? Something that was ... special to him? Or something like – like the magnifying glass?"

"No-o," said Ran, "I can't. Not besides the notebook and the pens. He didn't always have the magnifying glass with him, either."

Conan made a disgruntled noise and leaned forward, dropping his eyes to the paper again and clenching his small hands on his knees. "But I _know_ there's something missing! I just can't – think what it is..."

"Can you think what kind of thing it is?" asked Ran.

"Something," said Conan, slowly and carefully, "something to help with detective work, I think – something like the magnifying glass. Would he have a ... no, that's not right." He paused, and then continued more quickly, "Rubber bands – notebook – pens... Something small, something – no, that's not right, either – I can't..."

He broke off, twisting his face into an angry grimace, and Ran moved around the table to stand beside him and look down at the papers. "I'm sure you'll think of it," she said. "We've got plenty of time, and you've got a good memory. Just don't get upset – "

"I'm _not_ upset!" snapped Conan, his small hands clenching into fists. "I just can't – I should know – "

"Conan-kun, _calm down_."

Ran put out her hand.

She had meant only to touch his narrow, tense shoulders, but the instant she moved he jerked away from her, half-leaping and half-tumbling off the chair to land cat-like on all fours, and to scramble noiselessly to his feet and away backwards, his blue eyes suddenly darkened and widened, his face a terrified white mask.

"_Don't touch me_!"

Ran snatched her hand back.

For a long, slow moment they stared at one another across the empty chair, Ran frozen with her hands clutched to her chest and her eyes wide with astonishment. Conan's small body was as tense and tight as a coiled spring, and forcibly still, as if he thought that the slightest motion would send him flying apart; his face had lost its first look of blind, almost animal terror, but his face was still pale and his eyes were wary.

Then Conan stirred, his hunched shoulders lowing in a curiously cautious movement, and his closed face relaxed into childish worry. They spoke at the same time.

"Sorry – "

They broke off, and Ran darted an embarrassed smile in Conan's direction; it sparked an answering hint of a smile on his face.

"Sorry, Ran-neechan. I didn't mean to – but I really don't like – "

His childish face twisted in a mix of embarrassment, anxiety, and pleading, and Ran held her hands up in a gesture of understanding. "No, it's okay. I knew someone in America who was like that about people touching her. I'm sorry – I must have given you a fright."

Conan nodded jerkily and took a step back towards his chair, looking away from Ran to the papers on the table. Ran followed his eyes and, after a brief moment of hesitation, reached over and picked up the four pages of the inquest, running her hands up and down the now-worn edges until they aligned neatly. She stepped back to her side of the table, laid them down, and slid into her chair.

"All right," she said. "Let's have a look at those other papers."

_To Be Continued..._

**

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**A/N: Okay, so I think I'm getting better – the time between updates is very very gradually shrinking.

I was up late so I can't think of anything to say. Er ... thank you all very, very much for the reviews. They really do mean a lot to me, especially since this story could go so very wrong in so many places. The plot is kinda ... well, you'll see.

The only AUs I've done before are the Fractured Fairy Tales, and even after _Requiescat in Pacem_ (Death Note), _The Botanic Gardens _(His Dark Materials), and _Hands _(Fullmetal Alchemist), I'm still uncomfortable with this more serious and almost completely fly-on-the-wall style, so every review that does not run along the lines of "ewww your writing sucks" makes me very happy.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I was going to put something witty up here, but I forgot what it was. I don't own Detective Conan.

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**Chapter Nine**

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"Really?" said Conan.

"Of course," said Ran. She shuffled through the papers she'd copied from the ones in her father's folder and began to lay them out on the table, pushing the map and the other papers to one corner. "You're right – we're not getting anywhere examining the same material over and over, so we should move on. Besides, if we work on something new then maybe whatever it is you can't think of will come to you."

"Maybe," said Conan, but he got back into his chair and looked up at her expectantly. "What's first?"

Ran selected the copies of the sheet of letter-paper, turned them around, and set them on the table in front of Conan. "These, I think. Read them to me, please."

The boy leaned forward to scan the papers, then drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around his bare legs, and began to read, slowly and carefully.

The letter, which was from one Kimura Sen, began _My dear Eri-kun_ and, after the usual formalities and a paragraph of compliments on a court case she had handled the previous month, went on:

" 'My true purpose in writing you, you have probably already divined. I wish to employ you and your husband in a matter that has lately come to my attention.

" 'About a week ago, my secretary (who is a niece of mine and reliable) brought to me a missive which had excited her curiosity through its pecu–' peclu – " Conan broke off, mouth pursed, and asked: "Ran-neechan, how do you say this word?"

Ran leaned across the table too see the characters Conan was indicating. "It's 'peculiarity'."

"Thanks ... um, 'through its peculiarity. It was a pink envelope with no return address, and inside it was a smaller envelope of the common kind with my name and the word "confidential" printed on it – in a different handwriting, I might add, than that on the outer envelope; the writing on the outer was neat an angular, whereas that on the inner was neat and bold. Inside the inner envelope were two small sheets of letter-paper and a banknote.'" Conan looked up from the papers. "Ran-neechan, there wasn't a banknote with your father's papers, was there?"

"There wasn't," said Ran.

"I see," said Conan, his eyebrows lowering. " 'I have had my secretary reproduce the contents to the letter. "Dear sir, I hope you don't think it rude of me to send you a letter like this out of the blue, but the fact is there's something you should know. I work for your company, but please don't try to find out who I am for it's as much as my life's worth to be exposed."'"

"Dramatic," observed Ran.

Conan grinned. "Un. '"The thing is I happened to be going through the shipping records about a week ago. You know we sometimes have to send complaints about shipments being incorrectly packaged or about boxes looking like they've been opened when they arrive, well, I noticed that most of the records of complaints we'd sent were attached to the records of shipments that came from a certain place. By most of them I mean more than three-fourths sir. Anyway I didn't think much of it and when I went to lunch I made some joke about it to the others.

"'"I was walking home the next day when a man started walking with me. I'd never seen him before. In case you want to know he was a middle-aged man, a little taller than me. I'm 150 cm. in my socks. He walked kind of stiff and swaggering but he looked like a businessman. Anyway he comes up to me and starts talking about that joke I made, casually at first, but the long and short of it is he tells me that there's someone who wants me to keep my mouth shut about that and they're willing to pay a pretty penny for it."' Conan paused and looked up from the papers. "What do you think of that, Ran-neechan?"

"That it must have been a really poor joke," said Ran, and almost laughed at the half-bewildered, half-exasperated look that crossed Conan's face. "I was joking, too. If the boxes have been opened, then something's been taken our, right?"

"Un," said Conan, "but that's not all. It says, '"Well, that made me start to think, and I say to him, what if I go to the police, and he gets mad and says that if I blab I'm dead. Which is why I took the liberty and wrote you this note with the banknote, because I talked to my mum and she says the police can track people through their banknotes, and would have sent them all only mum and me barely get by anyway and a little extra is welcome."' That's the end of the informant's letter," said Conan.

"I suppose they did trace it, since the banknote wasn't in the folder," said Ran, slowly. "Is that all?"

The boy shook his head. "The rest is a request for your mother and father to come visit under the guise of attending a party, so they could discuss the situation before deciding whether your father would take the job or not. There's a mention of 'our mutual friend, B' hiring your father to deal with something that required 'swiftness and discretion', and then he says something about corruption in his company, and that's the end."

Ran frowned. "That's not much to go on."

"It isn't," agreed Conan, "so it's a good thing that your parents wrote almost everything down. This" (with a gesture towards a sheet of paper covered with Mouri Eri's neat handwriting) "is confirmation of what the anonymous letter-writer said about the shipping records. Almost every complaint about a package having looked like it had been opened and resealed was attached to the record of a shipment from a factory near Sendai, and all of those shipments arrived fairly early on Monday morning, which means that they spent the weekend sitting in a warehouse near the station."

"It does?" said Ran, blankly.

"Un," said Conan. "See, the records show that the parts were shipped by train from Sendai to Tokyo, and then by truck from Tokyo to the factory in question. Your mother's research notes show that the earliest Monday train from Sendai to Tokyo sets off around seven A.M., but they were getting shipments delivered by truck to the factory as early as eight-thirty A.M., and there's not enough time for them to have come by the Monday morning Sendai-Tokyo train, so – "

"So they must have come by an earlier train," said Ran. "I see now. What's the latest in the week that there's a train from Sendai to Tokyo?"

"Saturday evening," said Conan, glancing down at the papers. "That's not here, though – it's with one of your father's papers." He gestured vaguely with his left hand, and looked up again. "He wrote that the station the Sendai-Tokyo train goes through is closed all Sunday, so any shipments that come in late Saturday get stored in a nearby warehouse until they open again on Monday. Your mother's notes only have to do with the factory. I think she was probably taken on a tour of it to keep from looking suspicious, because not all of the notes are relevant – most of them aren't, actually, so it looks like she pretended to take notes the whole time. And there's another thing – look at the date."

Ran pulled the paper around to her side of the table and frowned at it. "I see," she said, after a moment. "It's over a month later than the date on the letter. My parents must have thought something big was going on if they waited that long to investigate."

"Exactly," said Conan, "and it was a good thing, too. Her notes say that the complaints stopped for about three weeks – from the 'about a week ago' mentioned in the tip-off, to the week before your mother visited, and then started up again."

"I wonder why nothing was done before," said Ran. "If they were complaining about it, why didn't the Sendai factory do something? Or why didn't they just buy parts from a different company?"

"Because the factory in Sendai was part of a company owned by Kimura-san's son-in-law," said Conan, "and it seems that the complaints were just routine. There was never anything wrong with the parts themselves, just the boxes."

"Then why all the fuss? Was somebody hiding dead bodies in the boxes?"

"Actually," said Conan, "it was drugs."

Ran's eyebrows went up. "Really?"

Conan pointed to a sheet of paper lying face-down in the middle of the table. "Your parents wanted to investigate privately and quietly and see if they could get to the root of the matter without alarming whoever was doing whatever was being done, but somehow one of your father's police acquaintances found out not only that something suspicious was going on, but that your parents thought they knew where the cases were being opened, and he – "

"Raided the place," finished Ran, flipping the paper over. It was a photocopy of a news article (_Sensation! Night-watchman involved in drug-smuggling!!_) featuring a picture of a haggard man sandwiched between two policemen. "Idiot."

"Yes," said Conan. "They did catch the man who was opening the boxes, and they did find out that he was removing packages of drugs from certain ones – "

"_Removing_? Then they were put in at the Sendai factory?"

"Yes," said Conan, "but of course he'd no idea who was putting them there in the first place, and he'd never even seen the faces of the men who hired him to take them out."

"And of course the arrest alerted the people actually running the trade to the fact that they'd been found out." Ran shoved the paper away from her.

"Of course. And the man they'd arrested died of heart failure the next night, before they'd even had time to question him properly."

"_Heart failure_?"

"It's easy to do, you know," said Conan cheerfully. "You just have to take a hypodermic needle and inject air into an artery, and there you are. It's a very tidy way to murder someone. Of course, the man had a bad heart to begin with, so it could have been natural, but it was awfully convenient anyway."

"I'll remember that if I ever need to murder someone," said Ran dryly. "So the whole thing was a complete waste of time and effort?"

"No," said Conan, "it wasn't. Remember the banknote, Ran-neechan? Your parents had it traced, and it seems that it was originally paid out to one Tani Kenji – yes," in response to Ran's inquiring look, "_that_ Tani Kenji. And I was right about the paper with numbers on it being from a bank account. It's a record of deposits and withdrawals from Tani's account. Have a look at it."

Ran flipped through the papers until she found it and held it up in the light, frowning. "Large deposits once a month – that must have been his paycheck; middling deposits once a month – some sort of insurance, maybe? Small withdrawals on an almost daily basis and a middling large withdrawal once a month – that's probably rent; oh! here's a _very_ large deposit and withdrawal of the same the next day. The 'pretty penny', I take it." She laid the paper down and looked across at Conan. "Did I miss anything?"

"You didn't, but you forgot something," said Conan, grinning. "Tani wasn't officially employed at the time of his death, and he hadn't been for almost a year. And the date of his dismissal from his previous job pre-dates the first complaint Akagi's factory sent by about a week. _And_ his previous job was as a janitor in the Sendai factory, according to your father's notes."

"Ah," said Ran, and rubbed a finger up and down the columns of numbers thoughtfully. "So he was the go-between there, too. How long did he have the job as janitor?"

"About a month," said Conan, "and before that there's no information on him for about three years, since he was released after an unproven charge of breaking and entering. Apparently he walked out of the police station and into thin air for three years, and then walked out of thin air and into the position of janitor."

"That makes it look as if someone on the inside got him the job, doesn't it?" said Ran. "Don't they usually check your background before hiring you?"

"That's what I thought," said Conan. "And normally people are cautious about hiring someone with a criminal record, so the likelihood that someone on the inside was helping him is pretty big."

"So," said Ran, slowly, "does that mean that he was more than just a go-between? Or … I mean, the kind of person who can get you a job even though you've been in trouble with the police before should be a lot more high-ranking than the kind of person who can slip drugs into boxes on the sly. If he's a go-between, would that mean that someone higher up got him hired so that he could feel around at his level and find someone who would be willing to do the actual work?"

"It looks like it to me," said Conan.

"What does that make him?" asked Ran.

Conan stared across at her. "Hm?"

"I mean in terms of rank," said Ran. "Since it's like he's being hired by both ends of the drug dealing thing at once, doesn't that make him pretty important? They did pay him a lot."

"I don't think so," said Conan, slowly. "No. If he was high ranking in their gang or whatever it is, then he wouldn't have risked showing his face just to bribe someone to shut up about a little detail like those boxes. But he was still paid a lot because being the one who keeps in touch with the person who does the actual shipping is a high-risk job."

"It is?"

Conan laced his fingers together and rested his chin on them. "Well," he said, "the police are more likely to catch the people who are actually handling the drugs, and when they do there's a high probability that the handler will squeal on the go-between in order to lighten his sentence, and if the go-between is caught or even suspected, it's likely that the gang will kill him to keep him from incriminating anybody really important. That," he added, "was probably what happened to Tani."

"You mean they killed him because he was recognized when he – "

"No," said Conan, straightening, "I mean that he was probably recognized because they had already decided to kill him."

Ran frowned. "They meant for him to be recognized?"

"His death _was _supposed to be a suicide, remember? I think they decided not to use him any more when the drug-smuggling that he'd been negotiating was discovered by the police, and having him murder your mother and then commit suicide was a neat way to tie off two loose ends at once."

"And to create a nice dead end for the police," said Ran, "and to scare my father off. But then Shinichi's father started investigating Tani's death. And then Shinchi dies and Shincihi's father suddenly throws everything down and leaves. That's awfully convenient for them."

"They probably would have done something like that eventually," said Conan. "Though if they wanted to warn Shinichi-niichan's father off, abducting Shinichi-niichan would be the obvious choice, since anything done to his mother would be in all the papers, and his father wouldn't be intimidated by being attacked. And threatening letters are – "

" – completely useless unless the recipient is a wimp or paranoid," finished Ran.

"Since you can't tell if someone is serious or not from a letter," agreed Conan, smiling faintly.

"Exactly," said Ran. "Did your father teach you that, Conan-kun?"

"U-un," said Conan, and smiled cheerfully. "'Tousan's really smart. He can figure out things like that all the time."

"You must take after him," said Ran.

Conan's smile never wavered. "That's what everyone tells us," he said, and looked down at the papers in front of him.

The silence that fell between them then was broken by the sound of a motor. It grew louder, and instead of quieting as it receded into the distance, it cut off once it had passed the house. Ran stiffened, but Conan looked up from the papers in front of him and said:

"Ah. Agasa-hakase's back."

There was something like relief in his voice.

"Has he been gone?" asked Ran.

"Un," said Conan, leaping lightly down from his chair and moving towards the door. "He's been on vacation," he said, disappearing into the hall, "because he hasn't had one for years, he said."

Ran slid out of her chair and followed him, pausing at the doorway to turn off the light, and blinking as the hallway was flooded with sunlight. Conan was nowhere to be seen, but when she went out and shut the door behind her, she saw that he had already crossed the yard and was standing beside the gate, in the shadow of the wall. As Ran stepped into her shoes the boy made a half-movement with his left hand and checked it abruptly, shoving both hands into the pockets of his shorts instead and tilting back his head to gaze at the sky.

She crossed the yard slowly, her own eyes fixed on the rosy clouds just visible above the surrounding houses until she reached the wall. "It's pretty, isn't it?"

Conan lowered his eyes from the clouds to her face. "It's pretty. Ran-neechan, what time is it?"

"Five 'til seven," said Ran. "I'll see you later, then … take care, Conan-kun."

"Un," said Conan. "You too, Ran-neechan."

He had already turned away, and her hand was on the latch.

"Blue," said Ran.

Conan half-turned and slanted an inquiring glace at her.

"Your eyes," she explained. "They're blue. Shinichi's were, too…. I always thought they were very beautiful."

The boy's face had gone blank again.

"He didn't have shutters behind his, though," said Ran.

The gate latched shut behind her.

_To Be Continued…_

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**A/N: **Okay, never mind, I'm not getting better, I'm getting worse. Much much much worse. I'm really sorry about the hiatus, but I don't have any excuses at all, because I was just being lazy. I don't really like doing difficult things, and this story gets more difficult as it gets longer, because I have more things I have to remember in order to avoid contradicting myself, and memory is nothing like my strong point.

Thank you very much for all your reviews. Please continue to support me as I slog through the endless morass that is the plot of this story. And – one thing I would really really appreciate – if you notice any contradictions, please tell me, and if you ever have a question about something that happens in the story, please ask it. I may not be able to answer you, but know what questions present themselves during the course of the story will tell me whether I'm on the right track or not.

Thank you again!


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I didn't do it.

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**Chapter Ten**

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"Nightmares again?" asked Sonoko.

Ran looked up from where she slumped in her desk, with her head pillowed on her bookbag. "I was wondering when you were going to ask. No, I just stayed up too late."

"How late is 'too late'?" demanded Sonoko, pinching Ran's cheeks. "Four? Five?"

"Four," admitted Ran guiltily, her eyes sliding past Sonoko's stern face to Kazuha, who was standing behind her, obviously trying not to look amused. "I actually got to bed before two, but I couldn't get to sleep for ages. _Ow_, Sonoko-chan!"

"This has got to stop," said Sonoko grimly, pulling at Ran's cheeks again despite her protestations. "Do you know how many boys were ready to fall at your feet the first day you were here? If you go on like this no one will be interested any more! Just be a good girl and stop worrying about whatever you're worrying about and let me set you up with someone."

"I don't want to be set up," said Ran, removing Sonoko's hands. "I haven't got time for a boyfriend. Tell her I'm too busy for a boyfriend, Kazuha-chan."

"She's too busy for a boyfriend, Sonoko-chan," said Kazuha, obligingly, while Sonoko scowled. "What are you doing today, Ran-chan?"

"Supper," said Ran, sitting up and fastening the clasps on her bag. "And," she added, "I've got to – meet someone. If I can."

"A boy?" asked Sonoko, perking up.

"Not a boy," said Ran. "A mad scientist. A – friend of a friend."

"A _mad scientist_?"

Sonoko and Kazuha had spoken at the same time. Kazuha grinned, and Sonoko added, "Really?"

"Well," said Ran, "he invents things, anyway." She stood up, slinging her bag over her shoulders, and Sonoko followed suit.

"What kinds of things?" asked Kazuha.

"Mad scientist things," said Ran shortly, moving away from her desk. "Cameras that look like lunchboxes. That sort of thing."

Over by the door, Kuroba Kaito turned away from the two detectives, eyebrows raised.

"What good is a camera in a lunchbox?" said Sonoko.

Ran shrugged.

"It might be good for detective work," suggested Kuroba as they came abreast of him. "I think I know who you're talking about – Agasa-hakase, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Ran, startled, and then: "I forgot. Of course, you would have known him."

"He used to make things for us, too," said Kuroba, lightly. "He knew Shinichi's father through mine. They're related, did you know? Fifth cousins or something."

"I didn't know," said Ran, slowly.

"And as alike as two peas in a pod," Kuroba told her. "Completely different personalities, of course, but it was the same for Shinichi and me. Aside from the fact that I can't make my hair lie down flat for love or money."

He smiled, and Ran stared at him. "You looked alike?"

"Not 'alike', _identical_," said Kuroba. "I thought that was why you looked at me so oddly when we met. Wasn't it?"

"I don't remember faces," said Ran, vaguely. "Not for that long, anyway – you reminded me of someone else. I think – I need to go now. I'll see you—" and without finishing her farewell she pushed past him, out the door and down the hall.

So this was how Shinichi would have looked – but no: Shinichi had been graver and more restrained, but his restraint was more open than Kuroba's easy familiarity, blue eyes blank behind the friendly look – like Conan's eyes.

So that was why Conan's face had stuck her so. Those careful blue eyes behind the thick glasses were identical to Kuroba's smiling ones, and so to Shinichi's, except that Shinichi's eyes would not have been so guarded. _You must take after him_, she'd said; Shinichi would have laugh – no, he _had_ laughed, she remembered, telling her about his mother fuming when he and his father had stayed up all night working on some puzzle ("_And on a school night_!" he'd mimicked to her, and she had laughed too); Conan had smiled as he replied, but the smile had not reached his eyes.

"Ran!"

Just outside of the building Ran paused and looked back, and Sonoko dodged around a pair of first-years and grabbed her hand.

"Let's get out of here," she said, pulling Ran along behind her. "You sure can move when you want to, Ran. I didn't think I'd catch up to you for a minute there. And will you _please_ listen when people call you?"

"I did," said Ran, confused.

"Not the first ten times," retorted Sonoko. "Here's a bench. Sit on it."

"I need to go," said Ran, but she sat anyway. Sonoko flopped down beside her and put her arm across Ran's shoulders.

"Look," she said, after a moment. "I don't know what's going on with you, because you won't tell me anything, but you've got to stop that."

"Stop what?"

"Every time someone mentions that Kudou kid – you're doing it again!"

"Doing what?" said Ran, stiffly.

"Your face," said Sonoko, gesturing to her own. "You just shut down, like you're not even there. I know you two were best friends and it must have been a shock to hear about it like that, but … are you listening, Ran?"

"I'm listening," said Ran, and turned her head to look at Sonoko's concerned expression. "It's not – it's complicated. I don't know if – if I could make you understand."

"Try me."

"I don't know how," said Ran. She turned her face away and clasped and unclasped her hands in her lap. Finally she said: "He wanted to be a detective, you know."

"I think you told me," said Sonoko.

"His father was working a case connect to my mother's," said Ran, "before Shinichi – died. He stopped doing detective work after that."

She glanced at Sonoko again, but her friend's face was merely patient – uncomprehending, and she could not say what she had meant to. Instead she said, quickly, "I was – I liked being around him, and it was good to think that he was around somewhere." Running her hands through her hair, she went on: "I used to – it's so stupid, but I used to make up stories to tell myself about how he and I would track down my mother's killer and bring him to justice."

Sonoko's brow furrowed. "But isn't he dead?"

"I told you it was stupid," said Ran, shortly. "And now someone has to track down his killers. It's all wrong. And I – I feel so guilty—"

She knew why she felt guilty: the note her father had brought her the day before they left Japan. It was still in her wallet, where she had hidden it years before, unpicking a seam, slipping the folded square of paper in-between the leather and the cloth lining, and sewing them back together with tiny, careful stitches. But she couldn't bring herself to say what she knew: that Shinichi, not even ten yet, had promised to find out why her mother had been killed, and had probably died for it.

"—and I don't know why," she said, drawing her knees up and resting her forehead on them. "I should have written. I should have…."

She couldn't even tell Conan, even though that slip of paper, those childish characters, might shed light on the case, so she left the rest of the sentence unsaid (_I should have told him not to, I should have said it didn't matter_) and fell silent.

Sonoko patted her shoulder. "There was no way you could have known. And you were what, six? At that age it's normal to lose communication with your friends whenever you move."

"I know," said Ran. "I think it's just that – everything's happening at a difficult time for me, that's all. I'll be fine."

"You'd better be," said Sonoko, patting her again. "Hey, who was it that Kaito-kun reminded you of?"

"A little boy," said Ran. "He – I see him on the way to and from school, sometimes. Is," she cast about quickly for a new topic, "—is that a new watch?"

"Makoto-san got it for me," said Sonoko proudly, sliding her sleeve back to give Ran a better view of the delicate gold wristwatch. "It's a beauty, isn't it? Wind-up, too. I think I'm in love."

Ran laughed. "With the watch or the man?" she asked, tilting her head to look at the stones set around the face. "You must have forgotten to wind it," she added. "It's stopped."

_It's stopped._

Sonoko was laughing, too, twisting the little golden knob in her delicate fingers. "Oops. I've been so busy—"

—_it was less than five minutes later that she heard shots._

"—and honestly, he was so cute when he gave it to me that I barely even looked at it."

_But they got their times wrong, you know._

"I probably wouldn't have noticed even if it was broken. It was so sweet of him—"

_I thought you said you didn't remember faces._

_I don't._

She didn't. She didn't remember faces, so even when she saw Conan's face she hadn't remembered, she should have remembered, if Conan looked like Kaito who looked like Shinichi then if she had remembered Shinichi's face, instead of Conan's face she would have seen Shinichi's—

"Ran?"

Sonoko was waving her hand in front of her face. Ran blinked and then put her own hands up to her face. "Sorry," she said. "I just – blanked out for a moment. What were you saying?"

"I was saying that you'd better get going if you've got to cook dinner," said Sonoko, "but you'd better not be blanking out like that in the middle of the street or anything. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," said Ran, and got to her feet slowly. "Thanks, Sonoko. For listening."

"You looked like you needed to talk," said Sonoko. "What are friends for?"

They walked together as far as the gate, where Sonoko went one way, to the car waiting to take her home, and Ran went the other. She was walking at first, with measured steps, but she went faster and faster until at last she was running, because maybe, maybe if she ran she could outdistance her thoughts, leave them behind her….

When she reached the alley that ran behind the Kudou house she was out of breath and had a painful stitch in her side. She stopped just a few feet in and paused, leaning against the wall, bent almost double as she gasped for breath. Before long she was breathing properly again, and she straightened and walked forward.

The Kudou house was dark and silent and still; the gate was unlocked, but she passed by it and stopped further on, where the high wall around it ended and the low one around Agasa's began.

Agasa's back yard was nearly as unkempt as the Kudou's, but it had the look of a yard made untidy by poor care rather than neglect. It was mostly brown, with a few patches of spring green where new grass was beginning to grow, and the bushes near the driveway were budding.

The driveway itself was in a state of considerable disarray. A yellow car lay on its side, near the house, and around it were scattered various pieces of metal and plastic and glass, and what looked to Ran like an engine. She stood looking over the scene blankly, and when the back door of the house slammed, she jumped.

The man who stopped just outside the door, staring across the yard at her, looked to be in his sixties: a rotund man, rather short, and balding on top, with a halo of white curls around his round, ruddy face that gave him an almost cherubic look. He was carrying a box full of tools and rags, and after a moment he moved over to the driveway and set it down.

"You must be Mouri-kun," he said as he straightened, puffing a little.

Ran nodded. "And you must be Agasa-hakase. Shinichi has – Shinichi and Conan-kun both told me about you."

"Ah," said Agasa, and a faint worried line appeared on his sweaty forehead. He pulled a handkerchief out of a pocket on his white coat and wiped his hands on it, looking away sideways, at the car.

As he did not seem to know what to say next, Ran spoke again.

"Is your car broken?"

"Ye-es," said Agasa, looking away from the car to her, relief in his voice. "Yes, I had some trouble on the way home. You see, the engine…." He made a fluttering movement with his hands and frowned. "I'm not very good with cars, you see. Well, er, Mouri-kun, Conan-kun has been telling me about you. It's very good of you to, to help him with his investigation. He is a bright child," he added, anxiously, "very intelligent, but rather – just a little…."

Another fluttery gesture. Ran waited, and after a moment Agasa sighed. "I think," he said, "I think that Conan-kun has been very lonely."

_I was here when you came in._

"Has he?"

Agasa hesitated. "Yes. He has brightened considerably since," another hesitation, "since your first visit."

"That's – good," said Ran, slowly; and then, flushing: "I'm sorry about that. I don't know what I was thinking."

"Oh, not at all," said Agasa, hurriedly. "No, as steward of the Kudous' property in their absence, I give my blessing. After all, Shinichi-kun's friends were always welcome in their home. I am sure they would extend the same welcome, even now."

—_anyway, invitations don't die when people do._

"Conan-kun said something like that," said Ran, carefully, "when we met."

"Quite right," said Agasa, but the worry-wrinkles were back and his round eyes looked anxious. "Quite right," he repeated, glancing down at the tools and bits of machinery scattered around his feet. "He and Shinichi-kun – that is to say, he reminds me of Shinichi-kun. In that, er, his ability to reason exceeds the norm for someone of his age."

"I suppose he must learn a lot from his father," suggested Ran, "since he's a police detective. Are they very alike, too?"

"I, er, I suppose so," said Agasa, his eyes widening; a bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face. "They are both very fond of mysteries and – and puzzles."

_That's what everyone tells us._

"So was Shinichi. I think," said Ran, her eyes on Agasa's nervous face, "that they would have gotten along very well. Don't you agree?"

"Of course," said Agasa quickly. "Common interests. Of course."

"It's funny that they should look so alike," said Ran, lightly. "Is there any relation?"

"I don't think so," said Agasa. "I really – it is one of those very odd coincidences."

"I would have called it ironic," said Ran.

"Oh, of course," said Agasa.

Wiping his face with his handkerchief, he glanced down at the driveway, and Ran, taking the glance for the hint that it was, said: "I'd better be going, then. Good luck with your car," and turned away.

He was still staring after her when the gate into the Kudous' back yard clicked shut behind her.

In the days since she had been there last the seasons had changed, and the yard was no longer a muddy morass. The bushes and trees were budding, and pale green shoots of grass had sprung up: in the dirt under her feet, in the untidy flowerbeds; even in the moldering piles of leaves young blades of grass were visible.

But the ground was still wet, and when she had crossed the yard and reached the door, she stood first on one foot and then the other, inspecting the soles of her shoes; and she stepped onto the bare stone step before removing her shoes and placing them neatly on the ground beside it. They left damp, muddy marks where she had been standing, and she looked at the oblong patches for a long minute before she went inside.

She found Conan in the breakfast room by the window, afternoon sunlight streaming in through a gap in the curtains and pooling around his shoes; the table and chairs cast weird, angular shadows against the wall opposite. The boy turned to face her as she came in, half-smiling.

"Good afternoon, Ran-neechan."

"Good afternoon, Conan-kun."

Ran looked away from him and walked to the table, sliding her bag off her shoulder. It hit the floor with a thunk that echoed around the room.

"You look tired."

He had moved across the room soundlessly, and was standing next to his seat, the table between them. There was concern in his eyes and the line of his mouth, and caution in the set of his shoulders.

"I am tired," she said, her mouth twisting into something that was not really a smile. "I've been thinking…."

Conan blinked at her owlishly, confusion written on his face. "Thinking what?"

"About – people," she said, turning away. "It's weird how people can go through life without noticing anything, even things that they've looked right at over and over again."

There was silence; she looked over her shoulder and saw that Conan was frowning.

"For example," she continued, turning again until she faced the window, "I doubt I could tell you much about the route I take to get to school and back almost every day. I know the names of the streets – I know there's a coffee-shop on the corner of one, and a bookshop on the corner of another. I can't remember how many buildings are between my apartment and the first turn I make. There's a woman who says 'good morning' and 'good night' to me every time she sees me, but I couldn't tell you her eye color or what kind of a person she is because I've simply never noticed."

Another glance; the frown had subsided into a curious stare, and she smiled crookedly at him and turned to face him.

"There were some things I remembered without noticing," she told him. "Things I saw without realizing what I was seeing. And I wouldn't ever have noticed if something hadn't – clicked. So I –"

She broke off, and then went on: "I wanted to ask you something. You don't have to answer."

He nodded, not even half-frowning; blue eyes round and curious and blank.

"What is your name?"

For one moment he was perfectly still, the mask of childishness frozen on his face; then it faded away .

"You already know it," he said.

"I know," she said, "but I want you to tell me."

"My name—" and for an instant he looked away, but only for an instant, and then he looked back: and for the first time since that snowy day his eyes were clear; tired, but unshadowed and unguarded.

"My name is Kudou Shinichi."

_To be continued…_

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_**A/N**: H-hi, remember me? Yeah, it's been a while. I'm back to writing this (hooray) although I can't promise to get back to anywhere near the speed of my first few updates (alas). I hate this chapter: it's way way too melodramatic, and anyway the canon Ran probably would have just told him that he was busted and the real Conan-Shinichi would have tried to laugh it off and then caved, but I couldn't make the blasted chapter work any other way.

I feel a rewrite coming on … but only after I've finished this, I promise. Which is to say (basically) that after much consideration, I've decided that there are two main things making this difficult to write: first, the style I am employing (if it is a style, and not just a mess) is so different from my normal style that it makes me nervous just to think about it; and second, the AU-ness has caused the characters to develop in such a non-canonical way that it's really, really hard to write them. Sigh.

But anyway. Thanks for reading, and thanks to everybody who has stuck with this story through the ridiculously long breaks between chapters!


	11. Chapter 11

For a disclaimer, please contact my lawyer at … oh, who am I kidding, I have no lawyer. And I don't have Detective Conan, either.

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**Chapter Eleven**

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The world titled and spun crazily around Ran. She couldn't move, she couldn't _breathe_, and all she could see was Conan – no, Shinichi, Shinichi – still looking at her with Shinichi's blue eyes widened under Shinichi's dark eyebrows, Shinichi's hair with Shinichi's messy cowlick and thick, tangled bangs –

And then he said "Ran—?" with his voice trailing off uncertainly at the end of her name, as if he had started to add "neechan" and stopped himself, and she couldn't even see his face through her tears. He was only an indistinct blur that moved around the table as he knees gave way and she sank to the floor, and a voice that said, haltingly, "Ran – Ran, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to – stop crying, Ran, please—"

The panic in his voice made Ran want to laugh and cry at the same time, but when he reached out towards her and then stopped, hands inches away from her face, she found that she couldn't do either. Instead she swiped at her eyes and brushed her hair away from her face until she could see him properly again, and said, a little shakily: "I'm such an _idiot_. Sonoko – Sonoko told me this house was haunted, and I – I didn't believe her."

He jerked away as if she had burned him, started to say something, and then stopped, mouth pressed into a thin line, eyes downcast, and held out one hand, palm up. Ran could see the tiny lines on the skin, the creases at the joints, the pale blue of the veins under the skin at the thin wrist, but when she put her own hand out as if to take his in it, her fingers met no resistance, and when, after a moment, she pulled it back, her curled fingers passed through his small palm as if it wasn't even there.

"Can you – feel it?" she asked. He didn't look up. "Shinichi?"

At the sound of his name Shinichi looked up, meeting her gaze with an air of forced casualness. "No," he said. "I can see and hear, but – it's different. I can't smell or taste or – touch."

"You touched the books in the library," Ran pointed out, frowning.

"I didn't touch them," he corrected. "I moved them."

"What's the difference?" said Ran, confused.

Shinichi hesitated, staring at her unblinkingly, then rose. Ran scrambled to her feet after him. "What are you doing?"

"Just watch," he said, looking away from her, his face set in a frown of concentration.

Ran followed his gaze to the paper-strewn table, her brow creasing, and then drew in a sharp breath as a pencil lying haphazardly on an untidy pile of paper gave a little jerk, and then moved slowly to the edge and toppled off, landing in the hand Shinichi was holding out – no, not landing, simply stopping dead without bouncing or rolling. Although Shinichi's hand was level and unmoving, the pencil was not: it was trembling almost imperceptibly, and Ran could see that it was not resting on his palm at all, but simply occupying the space directly above it.

"How…?" she breathed.

She'd been quiet, her voice not even a whisper, a mere breath, and Shinichi's eyes flickered up to meet hers for only a fraction of a second before turning back downwards, but in that moment the pencil, released from some invisible grasp, fell through his hand. It clattered to the floor and rolled out into the hallway.

Shinichi looked back up at her. "It takes a lot of concentration," he said, a touch of weariness in his voice. "And I don't understand _why_…. You know, I never believed – if I even thought about that kind of thing at all – in ghosts or – or anything supernatural, really, when I was alive."

"Don't—" began Ran, and stopped, breathing deeply and closing her eyes to avoid seeing the expression on Shinichi's face. "When I was alive" – he'd said it so casually, but something dark had flickered behind his eyes at the word. When he said nothing, she opened her eyes again, this time to look at him carefully, her gaze traveling over the features that should have been so familiar. "I can't believe I didn't recognize you," she said, at last, wonderingly. "It must have been the glasses."

"You're just bad with faces, you said so yourself," Shinichi retorted, smiling. And then: "—Glasses?"

"You didn't have them when I left," said Ran. When his only response was to frown at her, she added: "I do remember that much."

He said, "I don't," and looked away, still frowning.

"You don't remember?"

"I don't remember a lot of things," said Shinichi, shortly, "otherwise this case would be much easier."

It took a moment for the meaning behind his casual words to sink in, and Ran blanched suddenly as she understood. "You don't—"

He cut her off quickly. "I don't. Not that. But I do remember ... the men who came here were all in black, hats and coats and everything. So...."

"So you told me to watch out for the black hats," finished Ran. "I thought you were joking."

"I meant you to," said Shinichi, with something of the self-satisfied complacency she remembered. "But after I said that, if you'd been followed by someone in a black suit you would have noticed, right? And you'd have been more careful even if you thought it was a joke."

"Your right," said Ran, wonderingly. "I suppose I would have. But - don't you remember their faces?"

"I don't remember." And then, with a frown: "I'm not even sure they were both men. One of them...." He trailed off, frown deepening, eyes staring past her blankly. "...I _think_ it was a man, but there was something about him that gave the impression of a woman."

"Jewelry, maybe?" suggested Ran. "A slim build? Long hair?"

He pounced on that. "Yes! Long hair - long, light hair and light eyes ... maybe it WAS a woman. Maybe...." Again he trailed off, resting his chin on one fisted hand, but after a minute he looked up and shook his head. "It's no good."

"You don't need to try to remember," said Ran.

"Yes, I do," he corrected her. "Whatever I found when I followed them--"

"_You_ followed _them_?"

"That was why I didn't go straight home from Kaito's house," he said, impatiently. "I saw them and so I followed them. Only I can't remember _why_ I followed them - or how they found me - or why they followed me home ... they took the lunchbox, so I must have taken a picture ... and whatever I found and photographed must have been important enough that they thought they needed to kill me to keep me quiet about it."

"But that's—" said Ran, and broke off, running her fingers through her hair. "You're – you were just a kid. Even if you told the police what you'd seen--"

"My father IS a famous detective," Shinichi pointed out. "An amateur, but still famous."

"But how would they have known who you were?"

"I don't know," said Shinichi. "I _told_ you I don't remember things. Not what they looked like, not why I followed them, not what I found - I don't even know if I found _anything_ or if they just killed me to warn otousan off because _I can't remember!_"

Ran braced her shoulders unthinkingly, as if his anger and frustration were a physical attack, and for a moment his small form seemed to blur, pale face turning paler still and yet somehow indistinct from his darker clothes - clothes becoming so insubstantial that for a fraction of a second she thought she could see the folds of the curtain behind him through his chest - and then she blinked and it was gone, and Shinichi looked as solid as she was; but cold fear had already gripped her.

"Stop that," she said.

"Stop what?"

"That - I don't know what it was. I couldn't see you properly, I thought you were - leaving. Don't do it."

Suddenly motionless (eerily so, for now Ran could see that he was completely still: no movement to indicate breathing, not even a blink) he said: "Sorry. I didn't mean to."

"What is it?" she said.

"I don't know," said Shinichi, then added: "Sleep, maybe - or something like it. Sometimes I - I forget that I'm here, and that makes it - difficult."

"What do you mean?"

Shinichi frowned and settled his chin on his fist again, eyes scanning the room blankly before coming to rest on Ran. "You know I'm not really here--"

"Oh, of course not," said Ran, with a sudden spark of temper. "You're just my imagination. I've gone completely bonkers, right? You don't have to tell _me._"

Shinichi laughed, and some of the tension went out of his face and stance. "That's not what I meant. What I mean is that I don't occupy space the way you do. Gravity doesn't hold me down, I hold _myself_ down by ... by knowing where I am. It's as if I were a helium balloon tied to a chair, and the string is - stability, or my focus on the world around me. If I lose that focus - because of emotion, for example - then I lose my grip."

"I'm sorry," said Ran, softly.

He blinked, surprised, and then turned away, shrugging and stuffing his hands into his pockets with a swift movement. "It's not a problem, really, you don't have to worry. It's easiest here, anyway."

"Do you ever leave?"

"I visit Agasa-hakase sometimes," said Shinichi. "And there's a little girl in a park near here who can see me." He looked back at her. "She's smarter than you, though."

"Shinichi!"

"Well, okay," said Shinichi, blue eyes twinkling, "the fact that she tried to grab my hand and fell right through me instead _may_ have been a bigger hint than you ever got, but you have to admit that it was pretty dense of you to hang around me almost every day for two weeks without realizing who I am. How _did _you figure it out, anyway?"

"Your watch," said Ran, simply. She almost reached out, but at her words Shinichi raised his hand, looking down, surprised, at the face of his watch: at the motionless hands, one caught midway between seven and eight, the other nearly to the six. The long, slender spike that indicated the seconds had halted a mere centimeter away from the twelve.

"Oh," said Shinichi, slowly. "Of course. I'd forgotten."

"I hadn't realized – it clicked when I saw that Sonoko's watch had stopped," explained Ran. "And Kuroba-kun had just been saying that the two of you looked alike – and then suddenly other things seemed to make sense. The snow – the day I broke in."

" 'Visited', not broke in," corrected Shinichi, and then grinned suddenly. "That was a blunder on my part, I'll admit. I never would have thought that you'd forget that there weren't any footprints outside. You walked all the way around the house before you came in!"

"If you recall," Ran shot back, "I was a little preoccupied with the discovery that my best friend had – you were _watching_ me?"

"Of course I was," said Shinichi. "I'm always watching. I didn't recognize you, though, not until I saw you in the library. And then I would have panicked if you hadn't made it obvious that you didn't know who I was."

"I still say it was the glasses that – oh!"

Shinichi's still figure had flickered and blurred again, but before she could say anything he had raised his head, staring at her with wide eyes.

"That's it!"

"What—" began Ran, but he cut her off.

"That's what was missing from the list, the glasses! I had them—" his face had gone closed, and his eyes were darting around the room "—I had them that night, I know I did, but after I – afterward, they weren't there."

"I thought you said you didn't remember," put in Ran.

Shinichi looked at her again. "Not _then_, it was when otousan came, when they were trying to revive me – I was _there_ for just an instant – looking down at myself – and I wasn't wearing them then, I'm sure of it…."

"But," said Ran, "but you weren't – how could you have seen that?"

"That's not important." Shinichi gestured with one hand, as if batting away an annoying insect. "The _glasses_, Ran, I need to know where they went, what I did with them – unless…."

He was frowning again. "Unless what?" asked Ran.

"Unless _they_ took them."

"What would they want with a pair of glasses?"

"How should I know?" said Shinichi. "I told you – I don't remember things, all I know is that I don't need glasses – I _don't_, Ran, my eyesight has always been perfect – but I was wearing them and now they're gone, so they must be – what is it?"

Ran has suddenly scrambled to her feet. She grinned down at Shinichi. "They didn't take them – I know where they are."

"What? Where?"

"We've both seen them, don't you remember? You sent me to get some paper and then later—"

"_Ran_."

"All right, fine," she said. "They're in the desk in the library."

Shinichi made it to the library ahead of Ran, but just barely, and it was Ran who rummaged in the drawers until she found the glasses, half-hidden under Kudou Yuusaku's dog-eared script. She'd expected a look of recognition on Shinichi's face, but when she held them out for him to see he only scrutinized them closely, frowning and silent, until she looked down from his face to the heavy frames.

When she considered them, it was the weight of them that struck her: heavier than they should be, even with the thick lenses and bulky plastic frames. And she'd grown used to seeing them on Conan – on Shinichi's face without ever having really paid attention to them, so that now, as if for the first time, she noted the tiny, evenly-spaced pockmarks on the outer edges of both rims, the raised round places between hinge and ear, and the rectangular indentation on one huge earpiece, near the hinge – but it was the other earpiece, she saw, that caught and held Shinichi's interest. Finally he reached out, pointing, and said:

"If you press there and push here, part of the earpiece should come off."

Ran pressed and pushed obediently, and at first unsuccessfully, but then something gave way beneath her fingers, and something popped out of the frame and clattered lightly to the floor. She stooped to retrieve it, and found herself holding a tiny black plastic rectangle, no bigger that the tip of her thumb, decorated on one side with two rows of microscopic metal prongs.

"Is this … part of a computer?" she asked, hesitating, and then, with more certainty: "Did Agasa-hakase make this?"

Shinichi didn't say anything for a moment. "Yes," he said at last, slowly. "He did … he finished it right before you left. It's a – it records sound like a casette, only onto those chips – there's two of them – and we have the player somewhere, but I can't remember…."

"In the desk?" suggested Ran. Shinichi gave a preoccupied nod, and she set the glasses and the chip onto the shrouded desk to free her hands. Then she went back to the drawers, this time pulling things out and tossing them to the floor rather than replacing them carefully: books, scraps of paper, bundles of letters, and finally, in a tangle of wires, a black book-shaped machine with a small screen on one side, and odd ports here and there, and rows of small, unlabeled buttons and knobs.

"That's it," said Shinichi suddenly, crouching next to her and studying the thing with narrowed eyes. "Turn it on. That button right there," he added, pointing, as Ran hesitated over the unmarked controls.

"Will it still work?" she asked, and as if in answer the little screen lit up.

"It's solar powered," said Shinichi. "All his things are. If he'd patent the technology and market it he'd be the richest man in the world, but as soon as he finishes one gadget he's off on another, too busy to even think about profiting from his genius."

His eyes were unfocused and distant. Ran paused in the middle of trying to fit the chip from the glasses into one of the ports. "Shinichi?" she said.

Shinichi's clouded blue eyes flickered up to meet her worried gaze, and then he looked away. "I think I remember – why don't we leave this for later, Ran? I – I don't know how much it would help to listen to it, anyway. I might remember on my own – later."

"What's the matter?" asked Ran.

"It's not exactly … I just don't think you'll…." Shinichi was fumbling, and Ran looked down at him, puzzled, until he looked up at her again. "It might not even help," he finished, unconvincingly.

"We won't know until we listen if you don't remember," she said, reasonably. "How do I put this in?"

Shinichi hesitated, and then, lips thinning in a determined line, reached out and brushed a port with one pale finger. "It's that one," he said. "And this will play it – and that controls the volume."

The chip slid easily into the port Shinichi had indicated, and the machine came to life with a whir and a click.

_Breathing – quick, deep breaths. And then Shinichi's voice, tinny, a little hoarse, but recognizable:_

"_Sorry, otousan, I messed up. I – I dropped my student ID when I left so – I think that's how they found me." His breath caught in his throat. "I called the police and I hid the other one in – in my favorite place, otousan, you know, where I go so often." A deep breath, and a wooden rattling, and then Shinichi's voice again, distant and somehow muffled. "I'm going to leave it on in case – in case they say anything useful. They won't find it here. I'm sorry, otousan, I just wanted—"_

_A distant, wooden thud. Shinichi's voice broke off, and after a moment, footsteps sounded. Then a second voice, lower, rougher:_

"Here_ you are—"_

_The sound of a gunshot – a snarl – and then a second and a third shot, almost simultaneously. And through the sound of a third voice shouting "Stop it, you fool, he's no good to us dead!" Shinichi gave a sharp, half-stifled cry and then fell silent as heavy footsteps approached, paused – something went rattling away and fetched up against something else with a metallic clunk – and then the third voice speaking again, closer, softer:_

"_Tell me where it is."_

_A ragged breath, and Shinichi's voice: "It will be clear enough to you – soon."_

"_What do you mean by that? __Where is it__?"_

"_I won't tell you."_

_Silence for the space of a heartbeat, and then a slap, a grunt, and the sound of something hard hitting something wooden. And the third voice, again:_

"_Tell me—"_

There was a click and the voice stopped abruptly. For a moment Ran stared at the player, uncomprehending, and then she raised her eyes.

Shinichi was looking at her, his pale face grave and pitying. "I think that's enough."

"I'm sorry," said Ran, blinking away tears. "I'm so sorry, I didn't think – I – oh, God…."

A tear slid down her cheek. Shinichi put out one hand, tentatively, as if to wipe it away, and Ran closed her eyes. When she opened them, he was standing, looking down at her with a reassuring smile. "It's all right," he said. "I heard what I needed anyway. 'It will be clear enough to you soon' – that's a quote from 'The Sign of Four'. Okaasan used to say that I was off in a world of my own when I was reading Conan Doyle's works. The other chip is hidden in the book."

_To be continued…_

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A/N:** You know what, it took me so long to get this chapter finished that I'm not even going to complain about it. Thanks for your patience. :) And in case any of you are worried on that count, I have no intention to abandon this. I mean, at this point, it's sort of an honor thing. I WILL get this story done (eventually) even if it kills me dead in the process.


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